


Nightingale

by pineapplecrushface



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Character Coming Back to Life, Character Death, Coming Out, F/F, First Time, Hair Washing, Lesbian Eddie Kaspbrak, Lesbian Richie Tozier, Oral Sex, mentions of past bullying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:40:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24979312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapplecrushface/pseuds/pineapplecrushface
Summary: Richie Tozier kills a clown, washes some hair, eats a gyro, and does not (DOES NOT) kill Eddie's husband.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 105
Kudos: 259





	1. August

**Author's Note:**

> This fic depicts Eddie's husband as pretty controlling, particularly when it comes to her behavior and nutrition. That comes up in this chapter, and in later chapters, Richie also grapples with past issues with food, exercise, and her appearance. They're not the main issues of the story at all, but they are definitely present.
> 
> The title comes from a [Sappho fragment](https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Sappho.php): 
> 
> Nightingale, herald of spring  
> With a voice of longing…

In the hospital, Eddie fought with the PA who did her intake and flushed out her wounds, the doctor who stitched up her back and re-stitched her face, Richie, the doctor again, Richie again, the nurse who had to wheel her downstairs, and Richie again, and again, and again.

“This is fucking stupid,” she hissed when the nurse helped her put on a red hooded sweatshirt—it was Richie’s, and Eddie had a lot to say about that; she had perfectly serviceable button-ups, _Richie_ —and guided her into the wheelchair. “I can walk. I’m probably being billed out the ass for this.”

“Let’s not pretend you don’t get off on fighting with insurance companies,” Richie said. “Isn’t that, like, what you do for a living?”

“Not even a _little_ ,” Eddie said.

The nurse gave Richie a tired, grateful look when they reached the sidewalk outside the hospital and Richie said, “Thanks, man, we can take it from here.”

“Hope we don’t see you back here soon,” he said. Richie assumed he said that to everyone, but it felt very personal.

“Ugh, dickhead,” Eddie muttered when they were out of earshot. Her left arm was in a sling and Richie kept getting flashbacks to the cast on Eddie’s skinny, strong arm in the summer of 1989. Eddie had held it close to her chest until she was sure Richie wouldn’t draw a dick on it, which was a fair thing to be concerned about because the second Eddie stopped being so vigilant Richie drew a tiny dick on her palm. You know, just so she’d know how it felt to have one in her hand.

 _Eddie’s stitched up but the operation to pull the stick out of her ass tragically failed_ , Richie wrote in the group text. _I have no idea where the fuck we are. Somebody track my phone and come pick us up._

Richie watched, trying not to grin too obviously, as Eddie’s phone pinged and she read the text. She didn’t lift her head to look at Richie, but typed one-handed.

_South entrance. Drop Richie off in the burn unit bc I’m about to set her on fire._

_Omw_ , Ben wrote. He was the only one who hadn’t really needed anything looked at, so he had gently herded all of them to the hospital and then gone to the Town House and grabbed whatever they asked for. Richie, who had stayed with Eddie until Eddie annoyed her into having her own injuries checked out by poking her in the back where the worst of the bruising was, had requested Doritos and a cherry Coke. When Ben pulled up to the curb, he held up a Hannaford bag.

“Ben, I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but if Bev hadn’t already staked a claim, I’d be hopping on it right now,” Richie said, and Ben shook his head with a smile as he got out of the truck and opened the passenger side door for Eddie.

“You have a concussion,” Eddie snapped, yanking the seatbelt across her chest before Richie could do it for her. “Eating that shit will not help.”

“A _mild_ concussion,” Richie said. Ben tilted his head. “Seriously. They gave me Tylenol for the headache and I’m not supposed to be on my phone very much or exercise for a few days. I’m fine.”

“All right,” Ben said. “Eddie’ll keep an eye on you, anyway.”

“Monitoring cognitive impairment is important for the next forty-eight hours,” Eddie said. “I told the doctor she’s always fucking like this so establishing a baseline might be difficult.”

Richie climbed into the back of the truck gingerly, now that no one was looking. They had driven from Neibolt Street to Derry Home Hospital in Mike’s pickup, not Ben’s enormous rental, so there wasn’t blood all over the back seat. She hadn’t spent the twenty minutes it took to get to the hospital wrapped around Eddie’s cold, limp body, crying into her hair, in this truck. It smelled nice, cleaner than any of them. She pressed her forehead against the window and closed her eyes.

*

They arrived at the Town House only a few minutes after the others, and all of them paused in the lobby as if gathering the energy to walk upstairs. Once Richie had sat down, the battle was lost; she knew she wouldn’t be getting up for a while. Eddie sank onto the couch beside her, and that was the last thing Richie thought about before she was asleep.

She woke with a snort. The light was different; it was dusk and the lobby was nearly dark. She remembered that light not just from 1989 but from other Derry summers, when she would look up from whatever she was playing with and realize that night had crept in. The blue shadows would tell her that she had only moments before she wasn’t safe anymore, that she should have started heading for home half an hour earlier and now she’d have to walk fast and pretend she wasn’t looking over her shoulder or listening for footfalls behind her, and maybe when she got to her street she’d start running—casually, like she was just eager for dinner, but when she reached her front door and rushed inside and her mother said, “I was just about to call the Denbroughs’ house to see where you were,” she wouldn’t even be annoyed, because her mother’s voice would be as brightly and falsely casual as her running had been. That had scared her into obedience more than the curfew or the dire warnings from the police officers who talked to them during assemblies. If her parents were pretending everything was okay rather than telling her how to keep herself from getting hurt, the way they did at the pool or in the kitchen or in the yard when her father taught her to use the lawn mower, that meant they didn’t know how. She could never separate the encroaching night from that dread that meant the monsters were out and not even her parents could keep them away.

No one had come in while they slept, or if they had, they saw seven filthy, bandaged people sleeping and kept walking. The others were still sprawled across the couches and loveseats in the lobby like puppets dropped there after the play had finished.

Richie had fallen asleep with her head back on the cushion and her mouth open, and she smacked her lips a few times and scrunched up her face before she realized the comfortable weight on her arm was Eddie, who slept on Richie’s shoulder.

“Stop moving,” Eddie mumbled, turning to shove her nose into Richie’s neck.

“You’re tickling me,” she said, but didn’t move her shoulder, like Eddie might startle at any sudden movement. She sat, trying to be as comfortable a pillow as she could be for Eddie and knowing she was failing miserably, and listened to the clock ticking. It sounded uneven, somehow, which fell pretty far down the list of bizarre and impossible shit that had happened in her life, but was still unnerving.

Eddie sighed. “Sorry I was such an asshole earlier,” she said after a few minutes had passed and Richie thought the clock was going to drive her insane. “I hate hospitals. I hate…anyway. I just hate them.”

“I know,” Richie said. “You were basically the same level of asshole as always though.”

“No, I’m not like that usually,” Eddie said. “You guys bring it out in me. I’m pretty quiet.”

“That’s bullshit,” Richie said. “You’ve never been quiet a day in your tiny angry life.”

“No, I am now.” Eddie pressed closer to Richie, and it hurt, not just in the deep bruising along her back but in some tender part of her that had needed Eddie Kaspbrak to get close to her the way she never did with anyone else. If she had remembered during the past twenty-seven years that at one point, another woman had wanted to touch her—not for sex, but just because her body was a place of comfort and love—things might have been different. Or maybe not. Even in the days before she realized what she wanted from other girls, she had still gone stiff as a board when she wasn’t in control of physical contact. She could hug boys, kiss them on the cheek, demand piggyback rides, but girls were off limits. In college, her friends were so free with each other that it was too much, hanging around in their underwear, sitting in each other’s laps, sleeping in each other’s beds. _How do they do that?_ she had wondered. _How are they so comfortable?_ Sometimes she thought it would have been easier if she had had a sister, but she didn’t think it would have mattered. Her mother and her aunts were all open and affectionate. The awkwardness was all Richie.

“I guess your mom got what she wanted,” Richie said.

Eddie sat up, her eyes round and sleepy. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“She wanted you to be a quiet, good little girl,” Richie said. Her side, where Eddie had pressed against her, felt cold, but there was a little bit of relief in not having to hold herself so rigidly. The others were still asleep—Bev leaned on Ben, who leaned on Mike, who was spooning an enormous throw pillow on the couch opposite Richie and Eddie, while Bill and Stan slept in separate love seats across from each other—but she wasn’t sure she would have wanted them to wake up and see her face when Eddie was touching her. The ache of that fear was familiar too, the constant threat of someone noticing what made her happy.

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“Not if that’s who you really are, I guess. Seems boring, but whatever,” she said. “But you were never that kid. You didn’t think up most of the crazy shit we did, but you were usually the first one to jump.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” Eddie asked. Her face twisted for a moment. “Sometimes people grow the fuck up, though. I know that’s a foreign concept to you.”

“Nah, you’re still a wild girl,” Richie said. Eddie was small and composed and tidy. Her dark smooth bob was unruffled like she had spent the afternoon at her desk—at least in the front; the back was matted with blood and sewage. It would have been easy to assume she was soft, a little bit delicate, a little timid. But Richie knew what Eddie was capable of.

“I’m not wild,” Eddie snapped, and pushed herself off the couch with her good arm, kicking Bill’s loveseat. “I have to take a shower and call Martin, and by the time I’m done I expect you guys to have figured out the food situation.”

“Hold up, cowgirl,” Richie said, unable to stop grinning up at her even at when the mention of her husband made Richie’s stomach feel like acid was eating through it. “What’s your shower situation? Because there’s like a gallon of your face blood all over the floor and I don’t think you’re supposed to get your shoulder wet.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie said, closing her eyes like the world was ending. “I have to get clean.”

“Yeah, you smell like deep fried ass,” Richie agreed.

Eddie’s eyes flew open again. “Okay, fuck you. We just spent a day in a sewer and there’s fucking blood and hospital stink all over me. Get the fuck upstairs and help me wash my hair, you dick.”

“How did I not notice what a quiet, demure lady you’ve become?” Richie asked as she stood. Eddie’s response was lost when her vision went fuzzy and black for a second. She shook her head. “Wait, what?”

“Come with me,” Eddie said, waving impatiently. “You need a power bar or something.”

She grabbed Richie’s hand and pulled her upstairs, stopping to collect things from her own room before moving onto Richie’s.

“Sit,” she said, and Richie sat on the bed. Eddie handed her two power bars and added, “You’ll have to open one for me. Does your head hurt? Is your vision okay?”

“Everything hurts,” Richie said, dutifully chewing on the power bar. It tasted like peanut butter flavored wood chips.

“Let me see,” Eddie said, tugging at Richie’s shirt. “Come on, I want to know if it’s healing like mine healed.”

Richie saw the claw ripping through Eddie’s back, felt the hot spray of blood on her face, and set the power bar on the bed. “I’m gonna throw up.”

“Shit, okay, okay,” Eddie said, helping Richie stand and hobble to the toilet. “I’m calling the doctor. That fucking hack, he wouldn’t even listen to me. I knew your concussion wasn’t mild.”

“It’s not from the concussion,” Richie said, her head hanging over the toilet. Her heartbeat thumped in her ears and she swallowed against a wave of nausea, a line of sickly sweat running down the back of her neck. “Please stop harassing the medical staff.”

“How do you know it’s not from the concussion?” Eddie asked, crouching beside her and glaring. She squinted and Richie realized she was trying to figure out if her pupils were dilated. “Wait. You’re not pregnant, are you?”

“I puke three—no, four. Five?—times and you go straight for the soap opera conclusion?” She pushed herself away from the toilet and sat on the floor, leaning her head back against the wall. “No, I’m not pregnant. That would be physically impossible.”

“What about that guy? The one in your standup with the weird thing on his dick?” Eddie made an impatient gesture with her free hand. “You said he was your boyfriend.”

She snorted. “Eds, I don’t mean to ruin the magic of standup comedy for you, but comedians are liars. Nothing we say is true. Well, sometimes we call people by their real names, but only if we’re not telling a true story about them.”

“So you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“I’ve never had a boyfriend,” Richie mumbled. Eddie had unzipped her hoodie and was trying to wriggle out of it one-handed, but stopped and looked down at Richie, her eyes narrowed.

“I mean. That’s all right,” she said carefully. “Do you want one?”

“No, I’m gay,” Richie said.

She expected her stomach to protest, but when she checked in, it was fine. _Fucking traitor_ , she thought. _The one time I could use an interruption and you act like you’ve never seen an ulcer_.

“Oh,” Eddie said. She narrowed her eyes again. “I mean, that still doesn’t rule out pregnancy. I don't know your life.”

That startled her into laughing, but it hurt so much she stopped abruptly. “Fuck, how does it hurt more now than when it happened?”

“Stand up, let me see it,” Eddie said, giving up on the hoodie and trying to pull Richie up. “Haven’t you ever exercised? It always hurts more after you sleep.”

“Do I fucking seem like I exercise?” She pulled her arm away. “I don’t really feel like taking my shirt off in front of you, all right? I’m fine.”

Eddie’s face turned very pink. “Fuck you, then. At least help me get out of your stupid hoodie and wash my hair.”

Richie put her palms on the wall and used them to push herself up very, very slowly, groaning the entire way. She grabbed the cuff of the hoodie and pulled it so Eddie could slide out of it. “Get Bev to help you wash your hair,” she said.

“Why the fuck would I get Bev? You’re right here. This is your bathroom,” Eddie said. “Wait, is this because of the gay thing? Rich, what the fuck.”

“No,” she lied. “I just don’t want to touch your hair. There are like seven turds in it.”

“ _Richie_ ,” Eddie whined. “I’ve never felt so disgusting in my fucking life, and that includes the time your loogie flew back and hit me in the face. Come _on_.”

“Jesus Christ, _fine_ ,” she sighed. “Call me when you’re ready.”

She sat in the weird, hard chair in the corner of her room and waited until she heard splashing noises in the bathtub before she drew her knees painfully up to her chest and rested her forehead on them. It wasn’t that she was going to cry or anything, because there wasn’t anything to cry about, but maybe her eyes watered a little bit because of the concussion. _I told someone_ , she thought, and waited again, poking around to try to find the oily fear that always spilled through her whenever the words threatened to force their way out of her throat. She had never actually said them—hadn’t needed to say them. It wasn’t anyone’s business, not her manager or her friends or even the women she slept with. She could have kept silent and let people assume whatever they wanted to assume, but there was something about the fear that compelled her to tell stories about the piles upon piles of dicks she had encountered, an entire bibliography of imaginary sex, until she had built a career on her thirst for dick and her distaste for other women. A few years earlier, her manager had suggested she go on a few dates with an actor who needed it to be known, in certain circles, that he liked women. It was the closest Steve had ever come to acknowledging anything about her private life, but he said it in such a matter-of-fact way that it almost didn’t bother her—just something to help out an up-and-coming comedy actor. All she had to do was let it slip that he was one of the few men who could make her come, and both of them were golden. She still got flowers from him every year on her birthday.

And now Eddie knew. She hadn’t worked her way up to it at all, testing out her audience. She’d just vomited it out there in the direction of the most important person, and now _Eddie knew_ , and there was no fear at all. She just felt hollow and battered, a little, like she had spent the day crying instead of a few minutes. Or like she’d killed a space demon and watched the woman she’d been in love with for thirty years die and then come back to life in her arms.

 _Hey_ , she wrote in a text just to Bev. _Can I tell you something?_

 _Of course_ , Bev replied, so quickly Richie wondered what she was doing instead of getting ready to go out to eat.

 _I’m a huge fucking lesbian_ , she wrote. _I already told Eddie, but she didn’t treat it with the pomp and circumstance it deserves_.

 _Don’t go to Eddie if you want a party, she’s bad at having fun_ , Bev wrote. _I’m right fuckin here!!!! You want some champagne? Cake? I got you._

Richie covered her mouth to still the trembling, but she was smiling anyway. _Buy me a cupcake and a beer and we’ll call it good_.

“Rich,” Eddie said, her voice muffled.

 _Hold on, Eddie’s being a fucking princess_ , she wrote.

 _Go take care of your girl_ , Bev replied, and Richie blushed for what was surely the first time since childhood.

“Are you decent?” she asked, her hand on the bathroom door.

“Will you just get the fuck in here?” Eddie bellowed.

“Hm, definitely not decent,” Richie said, opening the door. Eddie had put on a pair of jeans and still wore her sling. She had thrown a towel around her neck, the ends of it covering her chest, but that was it. Her face was furiously pink, and she bit her lip when Richie looked anywhere but directly at her.

“I need you to change the bandage on my shoulder, and I can’t—I can’t fucking wear a bra until it heals,” she said in a rush.

“Good thing you don’t need one,” Richie said without thinking, then shut her eyes and shook her head. “Sorry.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie said, turning her back to Richie and flipping on the water in the sink.

“Actually,” Richie said, grabbing the shampoo. “If you’ll remember correctly, I was really jealous of your teeny tiny boobs.”

“I do remember that. I’m surprised you never got a reduction. You always wanted one.”

“I didn’t have insurance until like a year ago,” Richie said. “And now—I don’t know, I guess I don’t care anymore. When they hit my knees I’ll get them pinned back up.”

“They’re already halfway there,” Eddie said, but she grinned at Richie in the mirror over the sink. She grabbed the shampoo from Richie’s hands and squirted out a little bit in her palm.

“Aveda?” Richie waggled her hand, demanding more shampoo. “Look at your bougie ass.”

“Oh, like you don’t spend one of my entire paychecks on your hair.” Eddie bent over and doused her head in the sink, then waited for Richie.

“Seriously, there’s so much literal shit in your hair right now,” Richie said, hovering with her hands not quite on Eddie’s head. She was holding herself at a painful angle to keep from touching any naked skin, and realized there was no avoiding it. She shifted close and watched the shiver run down Eddie’s back. _What the fuck_ , she mouthed to herself in the mirror.

“You’re gonna have to wash it out of your hair too,” Eddie said. “Hurry up, I’m getting dizzy.”

Richie held her breath and slid her fingers into Eddie’s hair, wincing. She was so concerned about her own reaction that she hadn’t even thought about Eddie’s, and when Eddie sagged against the sink she almost jerked away.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eddie moaned. “Richie, holy shit.”

Richie shook her head at her reflection, eyes wide and panicked behind her glasses, then continued massaging the shampoo into Eddie’s hair. “Um, what’s happening here?” she asked.

“Your fucking _fingers_ is what’s happening here,” Eddie said.

Richie pressed her fingertips very gently into Eddie’s scalp, and as she moved down she grabbed one of the ends of the towel and stuck it under the wet curtain of Eddie’s hair, against her forehead, so the soap and water wouldn’t get into her eyes. She nudged Eddie to get her to stick her head under the tap again, watching it stream grayish brown and then clear as all the gunk in Eddie’s hair ran down the drain. _Back where it fucking belongs_ , she thought.

“It needs to be washed again,” Eddie said, sounding breathless. “Um, and then conditioner, okay?”

“Are you gonna pass out?” Richie asked, squirting probably eighty dollars’ worth of shampoo onto the back of Eddie’s head.

“I’m fine,” Eddie said, and moaned again, low and harsh, when Richie’s fingers slid back into her hair. Richie tried not to breathe too hard, but there was only so much one woman could take, and listening to Eddie make sex noises while she slowly ran her fingers through her hair over and over was way, way beyond her tolerance. Eddie’s narrow, bare shoulder kept digging into her hip, reminding her that Eddie was shirtless, and then she’d glance down and see the black strap of the arm sling and the big square bandage under it and wonder if Eddie would mind if she screamed.

“There,” she said finally, grabbing another towel from the shelf by the door and wiping her hands off. Eddie stood up, wet hair plastered all over her face, and Richie realized she was about to use the towel covering her chest to dry off. She thought fast and put the towel she had used to dry her hands over Eddie’s head instead, catching the entire soggy mass of it before it could drip down her back. “For fuck’s sake, hold still, you little hobgoblin.”

Eddie said nothing, but reached out and clutched Richie’s filthy shirt in one hand. When Richie had dried Eddie’s hair enough to push the towel back and reveal her face, she swallowed hard. Eddie looked _wrecked_. Her eyes were glassy and she was flushed all the way down her neck—all the way, Richie realized, down to her nipples, which the towel was no longer covering. She leaned closer to Richie and rested her head on Richie’s chest, holding onto her and trembling a little like she really was about to pass out.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Richie mumbled, pretending she was still drying Eddie’s hair to cover the fact that she was just gently stroking the side of her head. “It’ll get better in a second.”

“I’m not dizzy,” Eddie said into Richie’s shirt. She stood up after a moment, still flushed. There were goosebumps all over her arms and her small breasts, and her nipples were stiff. _I realize I killed a dude earlier today_ , Richie thought, trying not to look, _but I feel like I don’t deserve this. That was a public service and I cleaned it up right away_.

“Um,” Richie said, adjusting the towel over her chest. “Here. Let me get your bandage and then you can get the fuck out so I can shower.”

Eddie blinked a few times, like she was waking up. “Yeah. Jesus. Did you ever work at a massage parlor or something? I hate it when they wash my hair at the salon. They always hurt my scalp.”

Richie pushed at her until she was facing the mirror and examined the bandage. “Maybe they do it on purpose because you don’t tip.”

“I give great tips.” Eddie scowled into the mirror, tugging the towel off her shoulders and undoing the Velcro on the sling so she could pull it off too. “I realize I’m—high maintenance, or whatever. I know that. I tip people really well.”

Richie ran her fingers along the edges of the bandage, and watched in the mirror as Eddie closed her eyes and lowered her head. There was something on her face, a tension in her eyebrows that went straight to that strange little broken hope that had always lived somewhere inside Richie. She’d never been able to smother it entirely and knew it was because she hadn’t wanted to; every time Eddie held onto her arm or hugged her or said Richie was her favorite person, it was worth the inevitable crash when she had to accept again that Eddie didn’t want her. As a teenager, she had known that one day reality would force its way in, but it hadn’t. It still didn’t; Eddie was married, and somehow the look on her face when Richie touched her held that same kind of magic.

“Sorry if I hurt you,” Richie murmured.

“It doesn’t hurt.” Eddie tilted her head. In the mirror, Richie saw color flood her face. She kept her eyes shut, but her lashes fluttered and her mouth dropped open just a little when Richie smoothed the hair off her neck before she jerked her hand away. _Stop touching, you fucking perv_ , she told herself.

“I’ll go slow.” Richie began to tug the bandage free and hoped she wouldn’t throw up. The wound was a few inches to the left of Eddie’s spine, which the doctor mentioned several times as he gently berated them for going into a condemned house, despite Richie’s protests that they were searching for a little kid. She had wanted to say _Actually, the clown’s claw went right through her body, from back to front. I had her intestines all over me and she died, I watched her life end, so I’m cool with this, doctor, I’m very very cool with this gross but survivable hole_.

The skin under the bandage was healed. The stitches had pushed themselves out and fell off as Richie pulled the bandage away completely.

“Rich?” Eddie asked. “Is it all right?”

Richie’s hands trembled badly when she touched the scar, which ran the length of the middle of Eddie’s back. It was about five inches long, raised and paler than her skin. Richie wondered if it would disappear eventually like the scars on their hands.

“It’s gone,” she whispered.

“What?” Eddie turned around so she could see her back in the mirror, saw the scar, and whipped her head around again to look up at Richie. Her eyes were huge, and she swallowed with difficulty when she saw Richie’s face. Richie had no idea what she was projecting, but she felt like something was falling apart, some heavy thing that she’d been holding for what felt like years. It turned to dust and sifted out of her grasp and she was left wondering what the fuck she was supposed to do now that she didn’t have to carry it. She reached up, her hands unsteady, to touch Eddie’s small triangular face. Every feature stood out in the light like she was a figure in a Renaissance painting. Richie ran her fingertips over the heavy dark eyebrows, the long line of her nose, the newly healed stab wound on her cheek, her thin lips, the sharp, faintly combative jut of her chin.

“You were dead,” she said. Tears had welled up and over and spilled down her cheeks before she even realized she was crying, but she didn’t move to push them away. “I don’t know if you knew that.”

Eddie moved fast, hugging Richie around the waist with a ferocity that felt familiar. She had hugged Richie like that a lot, like she was tackling her. Richie stiffened, waiting for that weight to drop back onto her, for the poison that had lived in her thoughts to slither back in. When nothing happened, she carefully, slowly put her arms around Eddie’s narrow body. She rested her cheek on the side of Eddie’s head and observed her own brain arguing with itself from a distance, as if she were not personally involved. One part of her was restless with anxiety and mortified because she was filthy and smelled awful, and Eddie hated dirty smelly things. _Who cares?_ a new part of herself asked. _Eddie wants to touch you_. Eddie was mostly naked, and Richie was holding her so tight they were pressed together like—like they were people who wanted each other. Her new self didn't seem to think this was a problem, because Eddie was holding her just as tightly. Richie’s lips were on Eddie’s hair and she was kissing her, because Eddie was alive and she loved her, and she knew she was giving herself away—Eddie had to know. But Eddie didn’t move.

Richie pulled away first. “Sorry,” she said. “I think I got snot in your hair.”

“Are you! Fucking! What!” Eddie snapped, and examined her hair in the mirror until Richie threw a shirt at her and told her to get the fuck out.

*

Richie expected Eddie to be downstairs when she got out of the shower, but she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and didn’t look away when Richie walked awkwardly to her suitcase in her towel to find clean clothes.

“Martin is going to be here in an hour,” she said in a small voice.

“Who’s Martin?” Richie mumbled, then remembered. “Oh. God. I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Eddie asked. “It’s probably a good thing. He can see that I’m all right, and that you guys aren’t, you know, kidnappers or whatever.”

“Uh,” Richie said, and escaped to the bathroom again with a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, the wrong bra, and no underwear. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_ , she thought, scrambling into her clothes. She hadn’t thought at all about what would happen after this day, but somewhere in the back of her mind she had assumed that they were all more or less on the same page, and that page included a movie montage of each of them improving all the shit that was wrong with their lives—except for Stan, but Stan was different for reasons Richie didn’t really want to think about yet. Even in the brief conversations they had all had about their significant others, Eddie’s husband had sounded like a fucking nightmare dude version of Sonia Kaspbrak, with new and improved control issues.

 _Maybe Eddie really likes that_ , she thought. The new, free part of herself scoffed. There was no fucking way Eddie Kaspbrak _liked_ to be controlled. _You don’t fucking know that. Just because you’d rather go ten rounds with Pennywise than have that relationship, just because you…love her, that doesn’t mean you’re in charge of what she wants. She doesn’t want you, that’s for sure, and you need to get that through your head and roll with it, Rich, before you make it creepy_.

She was staring in the mirror without actually seeing anything, and when she noticed, she grimaced at the despair on her face. “Get over yourself,” she muttered. “Or at least stop being such a cliché. Have some originality if you can’t manage dignity.”

By the time they had both joined the others in the lobby, she was so restrained that she was barely replying to Eddie, who hadn’t stopped talking for almost ten minutes straight.

“I didn’t even think it was rude, it’s just like. If you could send it to me via email, Travis, why the fuck are we having a meeting about it? Why do we even have productivity workshops every year when you do the exact opposite of what they tell you to do? Why do you have to take your issues with your micropenis out on the rest of us when we have a really nice gym on the third floor?” she was saying when Richie suddenly stopped at the top of the staircase.

“Eds,” she said. “How are you going to explain the scars?”

“What?”

“Cheek scar, back scar. To your husband,” she said.

“Oh.” Eddie’s mouth tightened. “I’ll figure that out, I guess.”

“At least the one on your back is easy to hide,” Richie said, and then was unable to stop herself from adding, “Doggy style might be a problem for you though.”

“Richie,” Eddie sighed. “What the fuck.”

“What? I’m just saying, you could probably get away with not mentioning it as long as he doesn’t fuck you from behind.” It took a lot of effort to grin, but she went for it anyway. Eddie rolled her eyes and went down the stairs in front of her, and Richie wished she hadn’t said anything. She always hurt herself like that—teasing Eddie about boys she might like, teasing her about sex, pushing and pushing and pushing because she wanted to hear Eddie say she didn’t like that boy, wasn’t interested in dicks, didn’t have sex with her husband. Eddie would not, could not, give her what she wanted, but she kept digging in that wound, never letting it heal. It looked like that was yet another thing that hadn’t changed.

“Martin should be here in a few minutes, and then we can eat,” Eddie told the others. “Just as a warning, though, he’s really particular.”

“We’ll find a place everyone can eat at,” Bev said, squeezing past Eddie. “Bangor might be better than Derry. It’s not exactly a thriving metropolis.”

“Actually, it is,” Mike said. “Derry’s gotten kind of upscale, by Maine standards.”

“God, why is that so creepy?” Bev asked. She had a sweater and her purse in one hand, and put her other on Ben’s arm. It wasn’t quite a casual gesture; he glanced down briefly and gave her a look so full of quiet pleasure that Richie’s entire body ached with a pang of envy.

“Derry looks so n-n-nice now,” Bill mused. “Fucking Norman Rockwell. The clown did that.”

“Clown magic also healed up Eddie’s back,” Richie said. “Which is good, because I can’t do a repeat of Mrs. Kaspbrak freaking out on us because we broke Eddie’s arm.”

“That’s the kind of shit we need to not talk about when Martin gets here,” Eddie said, her voice getting faster and higher. “No clown talk. We’re here for a reunion.”

“Is that what you told him?” Stan asked. Someone had turned the light on in the lobby finally, and it made them all look slightly jaundiced, but Stan looked almost sick.

“I don’t even remember,” Eddie said. She leaned back against Richie for a second, running her hand over her face. “We should probably figure out a story for our spouses.”

“I’m telling Patty everything when I get back,” Stan said. “I don’t know if I can live with myself if I can’t share it with her.”

“I have n-no idea what to tell Audra,” Bill sighed. “Or if she’d even c-c-care, at this point.”

“Tom thinks I ran off with another man," Bev said, and gave a choked, startled laugh. "I left him, though. He—I left him."

“Good,” Eddie said in a low, intense voice, squeezing her shoulder.

“Congratulations,” Richie said, and gave her a quick, uncomfortable hug. “This does sort of step on my announcement though, just so you know.”

“Oh yeah.” Bev smiled and cleared her throat, her eyes wet. “Excuse me. Please don’t let my life intrude on your spotlight.”

“Apology accepted,” Richie said, winking at her before she moved away. “Listen, Losers, I need to tell you something before Eddie’s man gets here. In the spirit of making positive life changes, I want you to know how deeply, truly, absolutely fucking gay I am. The clown kind of ruined that for, I don’t know, my entire life, so fuck him and fuck this town. From now on everyone’s gonna know I’m super into pussy.”

“Amazing,” Stan said. The corner of his mouth twitched. “That’s the fastest turnaround from happy to disgusted that I’ve ever experienced.”

“Exactly how I felt the first time I saw you naked,” she said weakly.

He reached for her, and before they hugged she saw the thin, bright scars on his wrists as his sleeves pulled up. She grabbed one wrist as he pulled away, and he shook his head calmly and adjusted his shirt while the others patted her on the back.

“Wait,” Bill said, squinting off in the distance. “You’re a lesbian?”

“Yeah, dude,” she said. “Sorry, I know you were kind of everybody’s starter crush, but kissing you in second grade was what made me realize I was gay.”

“Bill, did you kiss _everybody_?” Ben asked, but Bill was spared by the door of the Town House opening. A short man with sloped shoulders stepped into the entryway. He brushed his shoes off on the doormat once, twice, three times, looked around, spotted Eddie, and gave a tight, anxious smile.

“Guys, this is my husband Martin,” Eddie said, drawing him over to them. “Martin, these are the people I grew up with. This is Stan Uris, Bill Denbrough, Mike Hanlon, Ben Hanscom, Beverly Marsh. Richie.”

She faltered a little at Richie, who tried to wave like the others and only got her hand up halfway before Eddie pushed Martin toward the door again.

“We’re really hungry, so let’s decide what to eat, okay?” she asked. “Not Chinese.”

“You can’t have Chinese,” Martin said, looking confused.

“I know,” Eddie said. “So let’s not go there.”

*

Martin Crewes was a financial security analyst who did not mind that his wife made more money than he did. Richie knew this because he told her four times while she shoved a gyro down her throat and nodded. Getting the eight of them to the Greek place in Orono had been an ordeal not quite on par with killing an interdimensional space demon, but pretty close. Martin had an objection for every restaurant Mike suggested while they stood in the parking lot and Richie texted Beverly _I am going to fucking eat him I AM GOING TO FUCKING EAT HIM_.

Finally Eddie said, “Let’s do Mediterranean.”

“Is that a good idea?” Martin asked. He didn’t touch Eddie, but he hovered so close to her that her arm touched him when she breathed.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, shifting just enough to maintain normal distance. He followed absently, like it was automatic for him to be one inch away from her at all times. “I’ll just have a salad or something.”

“No salad dressing,” Martin said. “They always put something in there that makes you sick.”

Richie waited for Eddie to snap at him, but she didn’t. Her expression didn’t even change. _Oh, you’re used to this_ , Richie thought. _You want it this way. This is the person you love_. She thought it again and again, trying to get used to it so she would have something to hold onto when she had to kill off the little shoots of hope that always tried to grow, but Eddie caught her eye as they got in the car and shook her head, begging her silently not to say anything. No, Richie didn’t think Eddie loved her husband with any great passion. But it didn’t matter, because she had chosen him and was still choosing him, and Richie had never even been in the running. Maybe, Richie thought, with the clown dead, she could finally get past it. She was forty years old and this enormous gouged-out ache in her chest belonged to a sixteen-year-old. There were a lot of things the clown had destroyed for her; maybe she could start rebuilding with this one thing, with letting Eddie go.

“How did you two meet?” she asked Martin when she had eaten enough that she was no longer afraid she’d go after him like a hungry dog.

“Grad school,” he said. “She was the stats tutor. I told her she had one of our problem sets wrong and then I asked her on a date.”

“Was it wrong?” Richie asked. Eddie sat on his other side, talking to Mike, and Richie watched her and imagined Eddie at twenty-two, twenty-four, twitchy and anxious and ready to snap at anyone who looked at her funny.

“What?” Martin picked at his salad. “Oh, I don’t remember.”

 _I think you do remember_ , Richie thought. _I think she was right and you didn’t like that at all_. Eddie turned and saw Richie and Martin talking and her eyebrows tightened together into one straight concerned line. Valid, Richie thought, but she wasn’t a badly behaved dog who couldn’t be taken out in public. She could be polite.

“That’s our Eddie,” she said. “Little baby math nerd.”

“You all call her Eddie?” Martin asked. He called her Edie, in his long nasal voice, _Eeeeeedie_ , and Richie fucking hated it.

“Oh yeah. She never let anyone call her Edith,” Richie said, and smiled at a sudden memory. “Actually, I called her Eddie Frank all through fifth grade.”

“Yeah, and Mrs. Platte called me that forever, so fuck you very much for that, _Rachel_ ,” Eddie said, scowling.

Martin whipped his head toward Eddie, his mouth open. “Edie,” he hissed, and Eddie turned pink and subsided, looking abashed.

“Eddie and Richie have always teased each other,” Mike said after an awkward moment. His voice was gentle, but Eddie didn’t look up.

“I don’t think I’d even recognize her if she wasn’t fucking with me,” Richie said, to cover up how obvious it was that she wanted to dump this man’s salad over his head. She tucked her hands under her thighs and scratched the cool, smooth vinyl of the booth.

“Do you remember—” Bill began, and Stan nudged him and Richie was overcome by affection. Not that she wouldn’t love to explain to Martin how well the Losers knew Eddie—better than he did, better than anyone—but the humiliation and misery on Eddie’s face was something they all remembered seeing from the other side of the screen door, pleading for Eddie to be allowed to come out and play until Mrs. Kaspbrak finally snapped and told them Edith was resting and didn’t need to get dirty with a pack of boys—and at that, she always looked Richie up and down and didn’t correct herself. Sometimes being taunted for looking like a boy bothered Richie and sometimes it made her laugh, but no one, not Henry Bowers, not her second grade teacher who kept her inside at recess the entire year when she wouldn’t respond to her name, not her cousin Valerie who refused to sit next to her at the fourth of July barbecue, had ever meant it with such contempt.

“You’re that comedian,” Martin said. “Right?”

“Nope,” Richie said. Her potatoes had gone cold, but she was pleased to discover they were still good, dusted with salt and paprika. “Never been on a stage in my life.”

“Richie,” Eddie said, exasperated. She had a little smile on her face, though, which was what Richie had been aiming for. “Yes, she’s a comedian.”

“You did that one show—what was it called?”

“ _Not Like the Other Girls_ ,” she said, licking her fingers slowly. He grimaced a little and she grinned.

“That’s right,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t think it’s my thing.”

“That’s cool,” she said. “It’s not really my thing either.”

He nodded, confused, and Eddie tapped her fingers on the table to get his attention. “Richie hosted Saturday Night Live a few years ago.”

“Oh, I haven’t watched television for years,” Martin said. Richie very carefully did not look at the other Losers because she didn’t want Eddie to intercept the message that would no doubt be shared between them.

“Let’s get the chocolate cake,” Bev said suddenly. She had been looking at the menu most of the conversation, and gave the others a bright, determined smile. “We have a lot to celebrate.”

“None for us,” Martin said as Eddie opened her mouth, and Richie closed her eyes and hoped she could resist getting so drunk she couldn’t see straight.

*

It was over fast after that.

“Uh, we’re taking off,” Eddie said, crossing her arms over her chest against an imaginary wind. She had jumped out of Martin’s car and run after the rest of them in the hotel parking lot while Martin remained in the car.

“Now? It’s like nine-thirty,” Richie said, her chest tightening hard. Jesus, if she hadn’t had long experience with panic attacks, she’d think she was going into heart failure. She clenched and unclenched her suddenly numb fingers over and over.

“He wants to get home by morning,” Eddie said, and shrugged. “I do have to work tomorrow.”

“Well, shit,” Bill said, and hugged her. “We’re all s-s-staying in contact, so I know I’ll talk to you, but I’m gonna miss you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie mumbled, reaching for each of them in turn. “I’m gonna miss all of you too, assholes.”

She got to Richie last, and Richie, panicking, pushed her away. “See you around, loser,” she said, her voice tight.

Eddie scowled and tightened her arms around Richie’s middle, and Richie put her hands gingerly on her back again. “I’m calling you this weekend,” she said, low enough so the others couldn’t hear. “You’d better fucking answer.”

“I’ll answer,” Richie said, rubbing her cheek against the top of Eddie’s head and holding on like they were sixteen and Eddie was being dragged off to New York by her mother again.

“All right.” Eddie stepped away with a furious look on her face and walked away, not looking back. She followed Martin in her rental car, then stopped as they waited to turn left onto Kansas Street and twisted around to wave to them.

“That guy,” Stan said, waving.

“Yeah,” Bill agreed.

“What the fuck,” Richie said. “We’re not inviting him to any more get-togethers, right?”

“I was about to suggest a no significant others policy,” Stan said, “but you all need to meet Patty.”

Eddie’s car lights disappeared, and the others turned to go back inside. Richie stayed staring at the space where Eddie had just been for a moment.

“Stan,” she said, catching up to him. “If Patty is as bad as Martin, you’re shit out of luck.”

“If Patty is ever as bad as Martin, we’re all shit out of luck,” Stan said, linking his arm through hers as they walked up the steps.


	2. September

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie comes out, Henry Bowers comes back, and Eddie (does not) (quite) come around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter mentions some of Richie's past issues with food and exercise, which are typical to the entertainment industry and which Richie handles in a typical Richie way. There are also a couple of paragraphs that talk about the very specific bullying Richie received from Henry Bowers and Patrick Hockstetter, so if you want to avoid that, you can skip from "She ignored the election coverage" and pick up again at "'Is it weird to have Bowers come back to life...'"

She felt fine when she left Derry. She felt fine when she boarded her plane to LA. She felt fine when she finally replied to Steve’s _Where the FUCK ARE YOU_ texts and wrote _Dude I’m back in LA, everything’s cool_. She felt fine when she got an Uber back to her house. She felt fine when she saw that she had been invited to a party and knew that she had to go because the optics of eating shit onstage and running away were not great, thank you very much Steve. She was fine when she drank a metric shit ton of Scotch and threw up discreetly in the women’s bathroom, where one of the girls who had won The Voice a few seasons before held her hair and rubbed her back.

She was fine the next day when her Twitter feed was full of pictures of her at the party flashing her boobs at the bartender, alternating with pictures of her sweaty, expressionless face onstage, hand on the mic, eyes blank. She was fine when Bev texted her to see if she was fine, to which she replied that she was fine. She was fine in the car on the way to meet with Steve at his downtown office.

“Just so you know, that shit was not acceptable,” Steve said when she slouched in and curled up on his couch.

She opened her mouth to tell him she was fine, and vomited all over his Nasser geometric rug.

“For fuck’s sake, do you know how much it’s going to cost to get that thing steamed?” Steve asked. “Are you hung over?”

“No,” she lied, and gargled the cold water his assistant had brought in. Richie stopped her before she ran off to contact the high end carpet steamer Steve no doubt had on retainer. “Just bring me some paper towels and, I don’t know, some fucking Method spray. I’ll clean up the worst of it.”

“Um,” the assistant said, glancing at Steve, who shrugged with one shoulder.

“Look,” Richie said when the assistant had brought her a roll of paper towels and some cleaner she had never heard of, and she was half-heartedly scrubbing the rug. “I have had a really, really bad fucking week, and I’m not doing very well.”

“You said you were fine.” Steve stood so he could watch over the edge of his desk and complain about how roughly she was treating the fabric.

“Well, I’m not,” she said. “I got dragged back to my home town because this fucking serial killer who tried to kill me when I was a kid escaped, and then he tried to kill me again, and between you and me, Steve, it made me reevaluate some things. Gay things.”

Steve let her stew in that while the assistant brought in baking soda—how the fuck had she gotten baking soda so quickly? Did she have it in her desk?—and doused the carpet with it.

“Fuck, Rich,” he said, rubbing his forehead, when the rug crisis was temporarily over and they were alone again. God, it was such an ugly rug, too. She had paid for ruining a lot of things in her lifetime, but this one would probably be the most irritating. “I want to talk about the serial killer thing in a minute, but gay things, let’s talk about that first.”

“I can’t do what I’ve been doing,” she said. She had surprised herself by blurting so much out to Steve—literally and figuratively—but now that it was out, she found that she wasn’t surprised at all. Underneath whatever had been happening since she had left Derry, the zombie Richie act that she always did when she was really stressed, she had been thinking about things almost without knowing she was thinking. She was sure there were better, healthier, and more efficient ways of making big life decisions, but not having any idea what the fuck was happening with her own psyche until it interjected and told her what to do was how she had always worked.

“What you’ve been doing has worked really well for both of us,” Steve said. His round face was scrunched up in concern and it reminded her of Eddie, whom she had also been thinking about without realizing it.

“It has. We’ve been an awesome team, but man, how many people do we pay to maintain my bullshit act? You know I don’t do dick. You know I’m faking it all the time. I was totally on board with it, you know I was, but I can’t do it anymore.” She took a deep breath and let it shudder out of her. “No more, okay?”

“What does that entail?” Steve asked. His voice was unusually slow and thoughtful. He was already being nicer than he was in Richie’s nightmares, where he terminated their contract and kicked her out of his office, but she still looked at the wet splotch on the rug and thought about throwing up again.

“I want to come out,” she said. “That’s the big one. But that means the rest of the persona has to go too. I have my own material, you know. I’m not just gonna fuck you over.”

“Okay,” Steve said, steepling his fingers and nodding. “Okay. Let me think. We have to strategize. This is really what you want?”

Steve, of all the people in the world, knew how she made decisions. He freaked out about it, because Steve liked to prepare for all possibilities and she never let him do that, but he knew that when she said something, she meant it.

“It’s really what I want,” she said.

“All right, let’s get Heidi,” he said, reaching for his phone. Heidi and her team were responsible for most of Richie’s social media, crafting her tweets with a mimicry Richie would have admired if it weren’t so fucking creepy.

“No, no more Heidi,” she said. “We can lay out a strategy, you and me, but I need to be the one who does this part, okay? I realize how fucking stupid it sounds to say I need it to be real, but I really, really need it to be real. It has to be my words from now on.”

She swallowed, clutching her phone with its robin’s egg blue case, the bright red smirking logo on the back. She didn’t even know if she had the password to any of her accounts, now that she thought about it. And what would she do if Steve said no, exactly?

 _Fuck him if he says no_ , she thought, not in her own voice but Eddie’s, high and enraged and at top speed. Richie was good at imitating it, and realized she had been using Eddie’s voice in her act for a long time. It was her generic Angry High Maintenance Girlfriend voice. Jesus fucking Christ.

“All right,” Steve said eventually. “Write it now and we’ll—we’ll make a plan.”

“Yeah,” she said, tilting her head back and puffing out a hard breath of relief. “Good. All right, let me call upon my amazing elocutionary magic. What do you think about the phrase ‘heterofraudulence’? Or ‘phony likes yoni, not baloney’?”

Steve stared at her flatly. “Is this what it’s going to be like now?”

“Oh Steve,” she said, grinning. “It’s so much worse than you know.”

*

Eddie called not even half an hour after Richie’s tweet had gone out into the world, but Richie spent the next few hours with Steve and then on the phone with her parents, and didn’t get a chance to call her back until much later.

“It should have been p-h-o-n-e-y,” Eddie said when she answered. “Same spelling as baloney. For consistency.”

“Nah,” Richie said. “Then you just have yoni out there by her lone-y.”

“Oh my fucking god,” Eddie said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Richie said, and did not say she was fine. “Just over here blowing up my shit, no big.”

“It’s big,” Eddie said. “I know it is. I’m really fucking proud of you, Rich.”

“I’m proud of me too.” Richie looked around her living room and heaved an enormous sigh. “The thing is, now I have to figure out what to do next. A lot of work went into this shit. Do you know how fucking hard it is to look hot but pretend you’re not putting in any effort at all because dudes don’t think you should try to look hot?”

“Wait,” Eddie said. Her voice was full of laughter. “Are you telling me you exercise and like, eat correctly?”

“When nobody’s looking, yeah, and it’s fucking terrible,” Richie said, flopping on her couch. “My trainer is terrifying, Eds. You would love him. He’s actually picked me up and thrown me in a pool before.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god. No, this is the best thing I’ve heard in my life,” Eddie said, words spilling over each other giddily. “Rich. _Rich_. Are you secretly a _health nut_?”

“God, you little ghoul, not by _choice_. I eat junk food and drink like a sailor on leave when I go out, which is basically every night, and then I have to atone for it by doing seventy-five Hail Marys on the treadmill and eating a wafer the next morning. I have no idea what I even like anymore. I think tomatoes, maybe?”

“Oh,” Eddie said. “That’s not funny, it’s sad. Sorry.”

“No, it’s—whatever. I guess it is pretty sad, but now I get to just be myself,” she said, and closed her eyes at the sudden stab of melancholy that came with the thought.

“It must feel nice,” Eddie said. “Now you can date. You know, publicly.”

Richie kept her eyes closed and smiled, imagining Eddie in her office. All clean and hypoallergenic, with only a computer and an ergonomic keyboard on her desk, her hands with their neat manicure encased in carpal tunnel gloves, the little suit she probably wore spotless and unwrinkled, gold studs in her ears. Gold ring on her finger.

“Eds, that’s very cute of you, but I don’t date,” she said. “I fuck around and sometimes, if I really really like her, we don’t pretend to forget each other’s names afterward.”

“Isn’t there anyone?”

“Anyone who wants to fall madly in love with me?” Richie smiled again. “I know it’ll come as a surprise to you, but I’m not lovable.”

“Yes, you are,” Eddie said.

“No, I’m not,” Richie said calmly. “People do not love me. I’m not upset about it or anything. It’s just—that’s how it is. I have blue eyes, I hate cilantro, I’m gonna die alone.”

“Rich,” Eddie said. “That’s not—you’re lovable. You are. Don’t say stupid shit like it’s a fact.”

“It is a fact,” Richie said. “I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m aware of who I am as a person. It’s not like it’s the end of the fucking world. I have a pretty good life, man, it’s not like it would be improved by some poor asshole pretending she’s gonna love me forever.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Eddie choked out. “Stop saying that. Stop fucking—just stop.”

Richie pulled the phone away from her face for a second and stared at it in consternation. Eddie was breathing fast and hard, almost wheezing. “All right, Eds, shit,” she said. “Someday someone will sweep me off my gigantic feet and we’ll love each other so much the gods will rewrite the universe for us.”

“I have to go,” Eddie said. “I’ll talk to you this weekend.”

She hung up before Richie could respond. “What the actual fuck,” Richie whispered. 

*

Late in September, Mike texted the group. _I need to talk to all of you. Can we Skype?_ he wrote.

“This feels very corporate,” Richie said as soon as they had all figured out their schedules and joined the group chat two days later. “Fungibility. Deliverables. Let’s circle back on that. Evergreen. Eddie, help me out here.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie said cheerfully. Richie was glad she seemed to have gotten over whatever had been up her ass, but it was more difficult than she had expected to see Eddie in what she had to assume was her home office, relaxed at the end of the day, jacket off but still in a sleeveless black shift dress. Nobody in the world needed arms that sexy, Richie thought, annoyed.

“Guys,” Mike said. “Henry Bowers is still alive.”

They were all silent for a moment. Richie felt a wash of cold run down her back and shuddered. “ _How_?” Bill asked.

“Probably the same way Eddie’s alive,” Stan said. His voice was abrupt, choppy.

Richie flashed to the memory of the scars on his wrists before the reality of Henry Bowers being alive overtook everything else. She rarely thought about the fact that she had put an axe in the middle of his head, because if she thought about it too long she always started to think she was secretly a psychopath. She felt worse for not feeling bad about it than she did for having done it, which she was pretty sure made her at least a terrible person, but there was a part of her that was also concerned her mind would slip out from underneath her without her noticing. That was what happened when you killed someone, surely—a slope from sanity to insanity? She felt clearer-headed than she ever had before, but there was probably something terrible happening in her subconscious.

“I’m sorry you’re still having to deal with this, Mike,” Beverly said. “This shouldn’t be on you alone.”

“It’s my own fault,” he said, rubbing his forehead. He had left Maine a few weeks after the others, but was quiet about where he was headed until they had convinced him that they wanted to know what he was doing and wanted to hear from him, see his pictures, talk to him on the phone. _Sorry, I’m used to being a lot more solitary than this_ , he had said sheepishly, and finally agreed to send them a little calendar so they could keep track. He was in British Columbia now, according to Richie’s phone. “I kept his name on one of my alerts, in case they ever found his body. He woke up where we left him, came back into town, and when they took him back to Juniper Hill he said he had been killed by an axe and come back to life. Obviously they don’t believe him, but he does have a new scar on the back of his head and that’s a little concerning.”

“The axe is buried in my back yard,” Eddie said.

“It is?” Richie asked. “I didn’t know where it went.”

“I took it,” Eddie said. She was clipped and matter-of-fact, almost like Stan, not looking fully at the camera. “I thought it might come back to bite us in the ass, so I cleaned it and took it with me.”

“I filed a report saying there was a break-in,” Mike said. “And we cleaned that place pretty thoroughly. I don’t think we have to worry about anything, but we might want to synchronize our stories again.”

“I think I’m more concerned about the fact that he came back to life,” Bill said slowly. Richie had had dinner with him a few times in the weeks since they had gotten back from Maine—not Audra; she was still in England doing reshoots, and Bill hadn’t talked about her at all—and the stutter had left completely, but he still spoke with a kind of slow care that made him come across as more patient and intellectual than he actually was or wanted to be. He had told her wryly that being considered wise was a matter of age and how slow you talked, and she had told him that anyone who called him wise had never seen him get distracted and walk into a glass door.

“So far,” Ben said, “it’s just been Eddie and Bowers.”

“And me,” Stan said. He had crossed his arms over his chest and was rubbing his own arms like he was cold. “I died the night Mike called us.”

“Your wrists,” Richie said.

“In the bathtub,” Beverly said faintly. She and Ben were in different windows—Beverly in Italy, Ben in New York—and Richie wondered what was going on there and if Bev would actually give her a clear answer if she asked.

“Did you see me?” Stan asked. He squinted into the camera. “I saw both of you, in the deadlights.”

“I saw us all die,” Bev said. “Suicide. One by one.”

“I just kept seeing Eddie die,” Richie said.

“Wait, what?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, it happened…I don’t know how many times. A lot. Sometimes you were a dude. I think sometimes I was a dude? Sometimes we were all different, but it was always us. Anyway, the clown just kept laughing and telling me Eddie always dies.” Richie closed her eyes and willed away the image that kept coming to her—in the shower, mostly, though she wasn’t sure why—of her hands pushing her jacket against the hole in Eddie’s body, feeling hot blood spilling over her fingers and seeping through the fabric until it stopped and went cold, Eddie’s sightless eyes black in the darkness of the cavern.

“But Eddie came back,” Stan said. “And I—I killed myself, and I came back.”

“ _Stanley_ ,” Richie said, touching the screen without realizing she was doing it, and she saw the others make the same aborted gesture, reaching for him.

“I’m sorry,” he said shakily. “I can’t explain why I did it.”

“You don’t have to,” Eddie said.

“No, we know, we understand,” Bev said. “We love you.”

“I’m just glad you’re still here,” Mike said. He sounded winded, like Stan had hit him in the stomach. “Stan—Christ. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Stan choked out. “Please. I’m okay now, it was just—I just lost myself for a minute, and I thought I was doing the right thing. When I woke up again I realized how badly I had fucked up, and I was in a bathtub full of blood, watching my arms heal.”

“Shit,” Eddie said, rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “Um. Are your scars still around? Because mine faded, but they’re not gone.”

“They look like they’re years old,” Stan said, tugging up his sleeve and looking at his left wrist. “I wonder if they’ll be gone eventually.”

“So the same thing happened to Bowers,” Bill said. “Richie, you hit him—”

“In the back of the head,” Richie said. Her face felt numb. She was sitting in her living room, and even though she knew it wasn’t possible that Henry Bowers, or anyone else, could be watching her, she suddenly felt like she needed to check her doors and windows.

“He was definitely dead,” Mike said.

“Yeah, it’s not like he used his brain or anything, but I cleaned way too much of it off the library floor for anyone to survive,” Richie said, and swallowed against rising nausea.

“Does this mean—did anyone else come back?” Bill said.

Mike shook his head. “I checked. Before Eddie, Pennywise killed the little boy at the fair, and he’s still gone.”

Bill nodded. “I have to go,” he said, and his window went black.

“Dammit,” Mike said. “I knew he wasn’t going to take that well. Richie, will you check up on him?”

“We’re supposed to go out for drinks on Friday,” she said. “Mike, do I need to like…I don’t know, get a fucking lawyer? Get a restraining order?”

“No,” Mike said. “Bowers doesn’t even know it was you. He didn’t see you. Just me.”

“Okay, but does that mean _you_ need a fucking lawyer or restraining order?”

“I don’t know,” Mike sighed. “If anyone decides to take him seriously, they’d find his blood all over the floor of that library, and the inside of my car, no matter how well we cleaned it. But he’s alive, and clearly hasn’t had an axe to the head recently, so I don’t know what I could be charged with.”

“I wouldn’t let you be charged with anything,” Richie said. “If something happens, we’ll tell them I hit him with something in self-defense. No fucking way I’m throwing you under the bus like that.”

“Well,” Mike said. He shrugged his shoulders a few times, as if to loosen them, and shook his head. “He hasn’t even mentioned me. He only knows he was killed with an axe, says he remembers being dead.”

“I remember it,” Stan said. “But I don’t think I was really dead. Like I said, I saw Bev, from when we were little. I saw Richie in the cavern. I saw—a being? Not the clown.”

“A turtle,” Eddie said. “I remember Richie and the turtle.”

“Maybe a turtle.” Stan shrugged. “We didn’t talk.”

“I—I heard Richie screaming,” Eddie said. The light in her office was too low for Richie to really read the expression on her face through the little square screen, but her eyes were huge. “It was awful. I was sitting on the edge of the mouth of a huge cave that felt like it was at the end of the universe, and I could still hear her screaming my name. The turtle crawled up next to me and sat on my leg, and said, ‘Well, I guess you should go see what she wants, shouldn’t you?’ and I stood up and started walking back.”

“That’s…amazing,” Bev said. Richie knew she was going to have a slew of texts from her and wondered if she could just run away and never open her phone again. Steve would understand if she just went off the grid, fled to another country, lived off the land. She was from Maine; she could totally survive in the woods if she could remember all the conservation lessons she had slept through in seventh grade.

“I mean.” Eddie fiddled with something just out of sight. “It’s pretty fitting that your huge fucking mouth was so annoying they sent me back just to shut you up.”

Stan cleared his throat when Richie didn’t respond. “So—it’s just us. Us, and anyone we killed?”

“As far as I can tell, yeah,” Mike said.

“Let us keep track of what’s going on,” Ben said. “You don’t need to do this alone. In fact, you don’t need to do it at all. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I want to do it and I’d love it if you never had to think about Derry again unless you wanted to.”

“Thanks,” Mike said. “We’ll see. I’m not going to pretend it’s not a relief to have you guys around to do some of the worrying with me.”

When they had ended the call—unusually quickly, because Richie had nothing to say and didn’t draw it out another fifteen minutes fighting with Eddie—her phone lit up. _What the fuck is up with Bev and Ben?_ Eddie had texted. _Is it weird if we ask? Is it weird if we don’t ask?_

 _Oh, I’m asking_ , she replied, just as Bev started to text her.

 _Not to be too nosy but how are you feeling about bringing Eddie back from the afterlife with your voice?_ Bev asked, and Richie shut off her phone.

*

Steve had told her it might be a good idea to take some time off and relax while she waited out any negativity. He seemed optimistic about it, but Richie had an idea what was coming. She thought it would be bad, and it was.

Not the homophobic bullshit—that was expected, and most of it was so dorky she couldn’t take it seriously. There were dudes who demanded she compensate them for tickets. There were dudes who said she was too ugly for them to want to fuck anyway. There were dudes who said they didn’t care as long as she filmed it. There were many people of indeterminate gender with opinions about the safety of her soul. She didn’t care about those that much; it was the ones who said the truth that bothered her: she had made a career out of shitting on other women, and now she was admitting she had done it to protect herself. She let a day go by after the first tweet, when Steve released her carefully composed statement to Buzzfeed, and then she picked one of the harsher tweets and responded to it.

 _Her redpill princess ass thinks she can just slide into the community and nobody will remember how she made her money_ , was the tweet. Richie had picked it because the author’s name was Screamfart89, and they had an icon of a shrieking black cat with lasers coming out of its eyes.

There were a number of responses to the tweet, mostly agreeing but a surprising amount in opposition, defending Richie. Richie retweeted it and added, _Screamfart89 is right. Support for coming out is appreciated but I’ve been an asshole a long time and want to be less of an asshole going forward_. She deleted the app from her phone as soon as she sent it, and avoided Funny or Die’s Oddball festival, to which she had been invited, in favor of hitting up every scary movie festival LA had to offer for Halloween. She ate caramel popcorn and candy apples and cider until she confirmed that her appetite for sugar was just as voracious as it had been when she was a kid. She was roped, gently but ruthlessly, into judging a children’s costume contest in Santa Monica when one of the judges didn’t show up and she was the closest adult who wasn’t a parent. The kid in the Harry Potter costume whose parents were clearly costume designers was the obvious winner, but Richie picked Chewbacca instead out of principle because she had made her sash out of duct tape.

She threw out all her heels and tiny dresses, and then went back to the dumpster and tried to find the one black dress she actually liked, couldn’t find it again, and realized she should have just donated it all and called a college thrift store to see if they could salvage anything, which they could not. She talked to Stan. She met Patty, via Facetime, and told Stan afterward that Patty was not Martin and would be allowed to come to Losers meetups if she wanted to. She started and stopped reading four different biographies. She ignored the election coverage.

The rest of the time she lay in bed staring at the ceiling. It didn’t feel too bad, really—not like she was depressed or anything, although she definitely was, but more like she was resting. Bowers was on her mind. His entire gang, really, but Bowers and Hockstetter were the all-stars. Hockstetter had prank called her all through seventh grade, heavy breathing into the phone and then giving a high-pitched giggle before he hung up. He always did it when her parents were at work, and when she told them about it, they said it was probably some boy who liked her and if she ignored it, he’d lose interest. Then, one afternoon, he started to talk.

The majority of her interactions with Bowers from kindergarten on had involved one of two scenarios: unprovoked shit-kicking and provoked shit-kicking. Sometimes he was just in a bad mood and wanted to hit someone, and sometimes she blurted out laughter or insults before her self-preservation could catch up to her mouth. Seventh grade was the year he started calling her Dykey Tozier, which she didn’t understand until he followed it up with illustrative gestures. Hockstetter didn’t waste his time on anything that artless. _I sneak into your room and hide in the closet sometimes_ , he said, and outlined everything he had watched her do. She was never sure if he was lying or not; he was just vague enough that he could have been telling the truth. When she told her parents that, they had a conference with his parents and the principal, even though she begged them not to. _It’ll make it worse_ , she said, and her mother reasonably told her that they couldn’t just do nothing, but when the principal said _Patrick, there are more appropriate ways to handle a crush on a girl_ , Hockstetter gave her a sly look and said _You’re right, Mr. Duplessy. I guess I just got carried away because I like her so much_. He had left her alone the remainder of the school year, contenting himself with snapping her bra strap or pushing her down like he did with Stan and Bill and Eddie, but if he hadn’t disappeared at the beginning of the summer of 1989, she suspected things would have escalated much faster than they had. Bowers terrified her not just because he wanted her dead, but because he had so unerringly picked out what was wrong with her—how did bullies do that, anyway? How were some people born with a radar that found your soft spots just so they could beat on them?—and Patrick terrified her because he didn’t want her dead. He wasn’t angry like Bowers. He didn’t hate her, or any of the Losers. He enjoyed hurting small creatures and watching them suffer, and they couldn’t make him stop because there was nothing else in him.

“Is it weird to have Bowers come back to life the same way you and Eddie did?” she asked Stan.

“Hm,” Stan said. She thought about him sitting in his quiet living room, probably having a bottle of Dixie beer. “Are you asking if I’m mad because he got a resurrection pass too?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

“I don’t think fairness enters into the equation when it comes to birth and death,” Stan said. “But yes, I’m a little annoyed.”

She sighed and looked at her fingernails, wondering idly if she would ever want to get a manicure again in between wondering if she should ask Stan the question she had been wanting to ask since the Skype call. “Did you want to come back?”

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know how to explain it, but it was very clear to me that what I thought was true—that you would be better off without me, that I was weak and I would get you all killed—that was all wrong. Everything was very clear. I had all this poison in my head. I think it had been growing since that summer. It was like someone cleaned it all out, patted me on the back, and sent me on my way.”

“Have you talked about it to Patty?” she asked.

“Not yet. She saw the scars—of course she wants to know. But I told her that I would tell her about it when I could make more sense of it, and she accepted that for now. I owe her a real explanation. I don’t want to half-ass it and scare her.”

“Jesus Christ, only you would want to do an A-plus research paper on how you killed a flesh-eating alien,” Richie said.

“Well, not all of us enjoy taking the easy way out in every situation,” Stan said mildly.

“Why work hard when you can _not_ do that and have fun instead?” She yawned and stretched.

“Is your life fun?” Stan asked.

“That is far too heavy a question for this time of day,” she said. “Let’s talk about Bill. What’s up with Bill?”

“Not subtle, but effective,” Stan said, because at heart, Stanley loved gossip more than any of the other Losers combined.

That night she dreamed she was sitting in the mouth of a cave. Her legs dangled over the edge like she was a kid in a chair that was too big for her, and she kicked her feet against the rock, which was not rock, because the cave was not a cave.

 _Where the fuck am I?_ she asked the Turtle who sat beside her.

 _My child, you are always where you are supposed to be_ , the Turtle said.

“Yeah, that tells me fucking nothing,” Richie said.

_It is difficult to be as specific as you want me to be. I see you in all worlds, in all times. You are always where you are supposed to be._

She huffed. “Well. That’s reassuring, I guess. What about Eddie and Stan?”

_You want to know why they returned._

“ _Yes_ ,” she snapped. “Come on, man. It’s the great question of my life.”

 _Eddie returns when Eddie wants to return_ , the Turtle said. _Stanley returns when Stanley wants to return. That is a repayment of the debt owed._

“Oh really? Did you owe a debt to Henry fucking Bowers?”

 _You were all soldiers in a battle you could not understand_ , the Turtle said. _Henry is tied to you_. 

“He’s fucking evil. Do gods just not notice shit like that? I want him to stay dead.”

_Do you? Are you comfortable with having taken a life? If he were to stand in front of you now, without a weapon, would you take his life again?_

“I,” she said. “I would if he tried to hurt us. I think the world is better without him in it.”

_Perhaps, but that is not up to you. The balance of life is maintained in ways beyond our comprehension. You see evil and good as matters of justice, of what is deserved. They are simply matters of existence._

“Fine, so I wouldn’t fucking kill him unless he was murdering us. Whatever, I’m a fucking wimp like that. How do we get rid of him without getting rid of him?”

 _Cut the thread_ , the Turtle said.

“Be more specific,” Richie said through her teeth.

_That is as specific as I can be. You are all tied together. Together you can cut the thread._

“More specific than a _metaphor_ ,” Richie hissed, but she was already awake.

*

She ignored Eddie for a while, but a few weeks later she accidentally answered a Facetime request and yelped when she was confronted with Eddie in full gardening gear, scowling at her.

“Hey, asshole,” she said. “Stan said you’re not avoiding him. Why are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not,” she said. “I was waiting for this moment so I could see you in your ’90s mom cosplay.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Eddie looked down at herself. She was in khaki shorts and one of her tiny little tank tops, and Richie found herself watching the beautiful neat lines of her clavicle, smiling like an idiot over the fact that she even found Eddie’s cute gardening gloves sexy. _Pathetic_ , she thought, but it didn’t come with the same level of self-loathing it usually did. She was just always going to be fucked up by Eddie, and that was that.

It was mid-afternoon on what was probably going to be the last warm day of the year in New York, a little windy, and Richie watched the sun play through the tree shadows. Behind Eddie, the lawn looked like a tank had rolled through it.

“What happened to your house?” she asked.

“I’m gardening,” Eddie said, wiping sweat from under her eye. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like Normandy, June 1944,” she said. “Are you under siege?”

“I’m doing the sieging,” Eddie said, turning to look at the carnage behind her. “I’m not sold on the chrysanthemums. And the fucking neighbors keep trying to give me hints. I don’t fucking need hints. I know what I’m doing, _Lloyd_. I’ve had this house for five years. Fucking Lloyd.”

“Maybe Lloyd is just a concerned citizen,” Richie said. “You look like you’re about to cut someone’s dick off with those shears.”

Eddie put a gloved hand to her forehead to push at her hair, which was tangling in the wind. “Fuck. I know. This was supposed to be a relaxing hobby and it’s like a battle zone.”

“I meant it as a compliment,” Richie laughed. “You look insane. I love it.”

Eddie stopped holding her hair in place and really looked at the screen, giving Richie a little grin. “I feel pretty accomplished. I dug up an entire juniper bush. I realize you don’t know what the fuck that means, but I basically won the war on my yard.”

“Holy shit,” Richie said, who remembered long summer afternoons pulling up roots in her mother’s garden. “By yourself? You’re the fucking MVP.”

“Yeah, I am.” Eddie shrugged her shoulders, preening. “I probably need to dial it back though. Martin hates it when I get crazy like this.”

“Why? It’s not hurting anyone,” Richie said. She hated that even the name Martin ruined her mood. _Get over yourself_ , she thought, trying to shake it off. “Or wait— _is_ it hurting anyone? Are you going to cut Lloyd’s dick off?”

“Not if he stops telling me the only way to get rid of the hogweed is to use Roundup,” Eddie said. She shot a grim look to the right, where Richie would bet Lloyd lived. “I just get really obsessive and it’s not healthy.”

“Fuck that,” Richie said before she could stop herself. “Who says it’s unhealthy? You just get really into shit. You’re allowed to like things.”

“I can’t just like things like a normal person,” Eddie said. “I focus on them to the exclusion of everything else, and I ignore him.”

Richie swallowed hard before she said something stupid. “Doesn’t he have hobbies?”

“Not like I do,” Eddie said. “It’s not weird to want to spend more time with your spouse. He likes to be with me, which is more than I can say for most couples.”

“Look,” Richie began, and paused. “I’m not an expert on weird straight people rituals. Obviously. It just seems like you should be able to do things you like. Like, are you gardening at three in the morning? Are you gambling for irises online? Do you make him say _landscape fabric_ or else you can’t come?”

“Fucking gross, Richie,” Eddie laughed.

“Well, do you? Because I think you’re fine,” Richie said. “And it kind of sounds like he doesn’t like you having hobbies that aren’t him.”

Eddie went so still, suddenly, that Richie thought the screen had frozen. Then the wind picked up again and the trees moved behind her. “I know you guys don’t like him,” she said quietly. “But that’s unfair.”

“Is it?” Richie asked. “I definitely got the impression that he’d prefer it if you didn’t even work.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “He would like it if I stayed home, because he thinks I deserve to be pampered. That’s _nice_ , Richie. You should want your partner to have nice things.”

“It’s nice if that’s what _you_ want,” Richie said. “I feel like I’m not getting through here. Mama, can you hear me?”

“Trust me, I of all people should know that someone can hurt you without hitting you, so don’t fucking act like I’m stupid, Richie,” Eddie snapped. “That’s not how it is. He’s just got a strong personality.”

“I didn’t say he was hurting you, for fuck’s sake. He just seems kind of controlling, that’s all. Like, did you have to fight to be allowed to work? Because that’s weird.”

“I didn’t—no. We compromised,” Eddie said. She threw her hands up, dirt flying everywhere. “Have you ever even been in a relationship? You can’t just go around doing whatever the fuck you want all the time.”

“No, but I know what the fuck compromising is, and it’s not having to give up something just to retain your fucking autonomy,” Richie said, and put her hand over her eyes, squeezing the spot on the bridge of her nose that sometimes helped stave off a headache. “What did you have to do, anyway? Stop eating carbs?”

“No, I—I switched to a therapist he picked out. Which isn’t a big deal. She was closer to home anyway.” She stumbled over the words a little and then pushed on fast, like she knew what Richie was going to say. “Look, you don’t get it. Martin is good for me. Haven’t you ever met someone who makes you a better person?”

For a moment, Richie thought Eddie was going to cry. Her voice was uneven and her eyes were bigger than normal, begging Richie to understand. Behind her, the overturned dirt had started to dry in the sun.

“No,” she said. “Sorry, Eds. I don’t want to upset you. I just already think you’re a better person, you know?”

“Well. Thanks.” Eddie slapped at a bug on her arm. “Fucking—I have to finish this before dinner. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” she said, and hung up before Eddie could say goodbye.


	3. October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie leaves, Bill leaves, and Richie's soul leaves her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://www.hagerty.com/media/buying-and-selling/ebay-find-1970-dodge-challenger/) is Richie's car.

The call came early in the morning. Richie, who was still feeling guilty about hanging up on Eddie amid all the other things she was feeling guilty about while staring at her ceiling, answered so fast she almost dropped the phone on her face.

“Hey, don’t talk,” Eddie said. It was hard to hear her; she was speaking in a low voice and there was traffic in the background.

“Um,” Richie said.

“Is it all right if I come stay with you?”

“What? Yeah, of course,” Richie said. “When?”

“Today.” Eddie breathed hard into the phone. “Sorry. I’m at the airport. I’ll be in LA at like seven your time.”

“Cool,” Richie said. “I’ll vacuum up all the coke.”

“ _Richie_ ,” Eddie hissed. “If you have any drugs, I swear to fucking god.”

“You’re such a dork,” Richie laughed. “I think I have some pot brownies from like 2010 somewhere in my freezer. You gonna throw me in lockup, Cagney?”

“Wait, who are you in this scenario? Are you Lacey or some random scumbag of the week?”

“I’m the original Cagney who got fired for being too butch,” Richie said. She listened to Eddie bustling through the airport, muttering her flight information, and smiled, closing her eyes to absorb the pleasure of it more fully.

“You’re not even gonna ask me why I’m coming to LA?” Eddie asked.

“And deprive myself of the mystery of the decade?” She considered her house and wondered if six hours was enough to Eddie-proof it. “No. You can tell me when you get here. It’ll be exciting.”

“I can’t wait that long,” Eddie said. “If I say it, it makes it real and I have to stick to it, okay? I’m leaving Martin.”

Richie inhaled too hard and choked on her own spit. “Shit, that hurts,” she said when she managed to stop coughing. “Eds, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Eddie said. “Just clean up your pigsty and I’ll see you in a while.”

For the second time in as many months, she hung up and just stared at her phone for a while, wondering what the fuck was happening. She was on her back in her very comfortable bed with the cloud-like purple gauze duvet, in her very comfortable sweatpants and long-sleeved baseball t-shirt, and her house was in a state of disarray that was nowhere near a pigsty but still definitely not Eddie Kaspbrak clean. She had bought the place with the first big chunk of cash she’d gotten after a Comedy Central writing gig, drawn to the 1970s feel of it, and had only updated some of the kitchen and the bathrooms since then. She liked the arched doorways and the gleaming redwood parquet, the big sunken living room with the fireplace and the tall windows, the red and rust and cream and turquoise accents everywhere. Over the years she had bought a bunch of vintage movie posters and paintings she liked, without any particular design in mind, and she liked it but felt like there was something missing. No matter how much cool shit she bought, that little itch never quite left the edge of her consciousness.

She spent the afternoon tidying and doing laundry and fixing up the spare bedroom and cleaning the bathrooms. It was soothing, being able to focus on what her hands were doing rather than the fact that Eddie had left her husband. In the early evening she went grocery shopping, and when she got home she looked over the food she had bought and wondered if she was actually going insane. If Eddie wanted fruit for every single meal during her visit, she could certainly have it, because Richie had wiped out the produce section at Ralphs. What the fuck did starfruit even taste like? She had no idea, but she clearly remembered thinking Eddie might think it looked pretty.

Eddie texted her at seven-fifteen to let her know she had arrived.

 _See you in two hours_ , Richie wrote back. She was only about half an hour away from the airport, but she had found it was wise to set low traffic expectations for visitors, and she was really looking forward to Eddie’s volcanic rage.

“The drive was fine,” Eddie said when Richie helped her bring in all five suitcases from her Uber. “If you’re a fucking Buddhist monk. I’m not a fucking Buddhist monk, Richie.”

She wheeled the last bag through the door and straightened, looking up at Richie. Her face was wan and sad and tired. She wore a thin black t-shirt, jeans, and flat black boots, a very New York uniform that looked out of place in Richie’s very Southern California house.

“I can’t believe you said I was bougie,” Eddie muttered, flicking her eyes around the house. “Look at this fucking place.”

“I know,” Richie said, suddenly embarrassed. “You’re gonna shit when you see the garage. The dude I bought it from was a total gearhead and it looks like a professional shop back there. I don’t even like to put my car in there because as sweet as she is, it makes her look a little shabby.”

“What kind of car?” Eddie asked, perking up.

“I’ll show you later,” Richie said hastily, knowing that if she let Eddie anywhere near it, they would form an indelible bond and Richie didn’t know if she could handle Eddie falling in love with her car. “Let’s get your massive fucking luggage fleet into the spare room and then we can have a drink.”

When they had tucked all the suitcases into the closet in the spare bedroom, Eddie touched the closet wall and sighed in satisfaction when she had to reach her arm all the way out to touch the other side.

“What, do they not have walk-in closets in Long Island?” Richie asked and winced, remembering why Eddie was there.

“Not our house. It was on my list, but we decided on a place with an extra bedroom instead,” Eddie said. She gave Richie a tight, bitter little smile. “For when we had kids. Plural.”

“You never really wanted kids,” Richie said. “Right? I remember you saying that.”

“I don’t know. I never really got a chance to think about it because it was just—assumed. I never even went on fucking birth control because the one time I brought it up, he sent me a folder full of articles about how it could damage my fertility, and I didn’t care that much at the time so I just ignored it.” Her thin chest was rising and falling fast, and she pushed past Richie to go out into the living room. “Can we have that drink? I could probably use it.”

Richie opened up the bar, a circular stand in the corner that folded out into a cabinet. It was made of patterned teak, and it was very full.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie whispered. “You’re living out the fantasy of every suburban dad in 1975.”

“That’s what I was going for,” she said, pleased. “What do you want, a Harvey Wallbanger? A Pink Squirrel?”

“Do you just have regular beer?”

“Probably not,” Richie admitted. “I can get some though.”

“Oh, I was just wondering. I’m definitely having some of that Bordeaux blanc,” Eddie said, reaching for the cooler.

“Little bougie baby,” Richie crooned.

“Don’t even fucking start with me. I know exactly how much that antique television costs,” Eddie said, stomping off into the living room with a final glare over her shoulder.

*

It took half an hour and another glass of wine for Eddie to finally really relax on her end of the couch.

“I know you’re dying to ask,” she said, setting her empty glass down on the coffee table.

“I’m really not, Eds,” Richie said. “You can tell me if you want to tell me. If you don’t want to talk about it, I swear, I won’t push it.”

“Maybe I want you to push it.”

Richie watched her carefully over the top of her glass. Eddie was curled up, legs tucked underneath her, looking nothing like she had in high school at all but still so Eddie that Richie’s déjà vu was going crazy. She’d always gotten déjà vu so strong it felt like a kick in the stomach, which made sense now that she considered it. There were so many things she hadn’t remembered experiencing. She was always getting caught up in the way a window looked from a certain angle or light, the way someone said her name, or the one time a girl passed her a lighter and she had to sit down because she felt like she had fallen into another universe.

“Okay,” Richie said. “Why did you leave? Are you going back?”

“I left because I’ve wanted to leave since I married him,” Eddie said. She sagged even further into the couch, leaning her head back. “I’ve never told anyone that.”

“Why did you marry him?” Richie asked. “I mean, what the fuck.”

“I don’t fucking know, Richie,” Eddie snapped. “My mother was dying, and I just—all she wanted was for me to be taken care of by someone who knew I was delicate and could keep me healthy. He’s very, very invested in every aspect of my health.”

Richie scoffed involuntarily, then made a loud fart noise voluntarily. “You’re as delicate as a fucking diamond.”

“I _know_ that. I know it now. But I didn’t know it then,” Eddie said. She rubbed her forehead. “He went out and got me another inhaler when I got home after Derry. I told him I remembered that all the pills and the asthma were fake, and he called my therapist and booked me an appointment and then went out and got me another inhaler. I knew, Rich. I knew I had to fucking leave.”

“Well then, what the fuck was with that whole song and dance the other day? You had me thinking you were the love match of the century.”

“Sunk cost, I guess,” she said. “We’ve been married for twelve years. When we were first together it was…satisfying. I gave my mother what she wanted, finally. My life was totally organized and it made sense. But it doesn’t make sense at all, and I fucking knew that. There was always something so wrong.”

Her voice had started to tremble, and she moved forward and crawled across the couch until she was next to Richie, pressed tight against her side. Richie put an arm around her, grabbing a pillow and setting it in her lap, and guided Eddie down so she could rest her head there.

“I had to leave when he was at work,” she said, sounding hollow and lost. “Because I knew he’d talk me out of it. I can’t even talk to him on the phone, even though he’s called me like twenty times, because he’ll just make it so—reasonable. I’ve been texting him instead, which is shitty, but I just _can’t_.”

Richie bit her lips furiously before she just couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What made you finally do it?”

“You. Talking to you,” Eddie said. “He didn’t—Rich, he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No?” Richie was glad Eddie couldn’t see her face. She rested her hand on Eddie’s shoulder, feeling her warmth through the thin t-shirt.

“No, and I feel so fucking awful,” Eddie said. “I keep thinking about him coming home and seeing I’m gone. He cares about me so much. I didn’t want to hurt him, Rich, I fucking hate that I’m hurting him. I just don’t love him.”

She lost it on the last word, turning her face into the pillow and crying so hard she curled into a ball. Richie stared down at her, wide-eyed, agonized. She almost touched Eddie’s hair but stopped herself, clenching her fingers into a fist before she took a deep breath and went for it anyway because she was Eddie’s friend before all else. She smoothed Eddie’s hair away from her damp forehead and ran her fingers through it, remembering how much she had liked that when they were in Derry. It seemed to make things worse now, though; Eddie clutched the pillow and cried like she was howling, and Richie threw anxiety to the wind and bent down at the waist to hold the shaking body in her lap, resting her head on the back of Eddie’s neck.

“Eddie,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I know it sucks. I know.”

It lasted so long Richie’s legs started to go numb, and she tried not to really hate Martin Crewes but finally gave up and hated him. If he loved Eddie, maybe Richie would have given him a point or two out of sympathy, but she didn’t think he loved Eddie, not really. He probably did care about her, because who could help caring about Eddie, but even from the little interaction Richie had had with him, she could see that he recognized how formidable Eddie was and had zeroed in on the fact that he could control her by treating her like she was unhealthy and irrational, too loud, too embarrassing, too much.

Finally Eddie was quiet. Richie straightened up and ran a hand down her back and realized she was asleep, making soft snuffling noises through her stuffed up nose.

“Get up, Eds,” Richie whispered. “If you sleep here you’ll kill both of us.”

“No,” Eddie said in a small voice, stuffing one of her hands under Richie’s leg.

“I can’t carry you,” Richie said, trying not to laugh.

“I bet you could. You’re tall.” Eddie sat up, her face pinched and puffy and grumpy, and let Richie lead her to the spare bedroom.

“Night, Eds,” she murmured as she turned to head down the hall to her own room, but Eddie caught her by the wrist and held on. She turned back and looked at Eddie, who was half in and half out of the room, resting her head on the door frame.

“I might wake you up,” Eddie said. “I have a lot of nightmares. You don’t have to worry, I just might be kind of loud.”

“I have them too,” Richie said, and tried to smile. “The neighbors will think we’re just two ladies screaming in the middle of the night. Some new therapy treatment.”

“Just don’t call the cops or anything, okay?” Eddie’s fingers tightened around her wrist.

“I won’t.” There was something in Eddie’s expression, relief maybe, that made her ask, “Did Martin do that?”

“He said he might, because he thought I could be a danger to myself,” she said. “I think he might try to call them again because I left, so I—I told him I’d get a restraining order if he did.”

“If you were screaming about killing the clown, you could see how that might freak someone out,” Richie said, trying to be reasonable instead of wishing that an anvil would fall on one particular spot three thousand miles away. But she wasn’t reasonable about Eddie and never had been, so she added, “But fuck that guy, Eds.”

She slid out of Eddie’s grasp but linked their fingers together, and without thinking, she brought Eddie’s hand up to her lips and kissed the base of her thumb, regretting it and everything about her entire life before she had fully completed the action.

“Um. Night,” she said, dropping Eddie’s hand like a hot potato before she fled to her room.

*

As a kid, Richie had had very certain ideas about what her room should look like. No, it was not clean—her parents despaired of ever finding certain household items again—but she was going for maximalist anarchy and that wasn’t a tidy aesthetic. She had covered every inch of her walls in pictures of things and people she found interesting, in Bill’s drawings and notes from Eddie and Stan and pictures of the Losers. She had a purple bedspread and four lava lamps and glow-in-the-dark paint on the ceiling, and had ripped down her Lost Boys poster to put in the clubhouse but never found anything worthy of replacing it.

Eddie always said she hated Richie’s room, but it was clear she loved it not only because Richie had a little television and a Nintendo, but also because she was allowed to eat whatever she wanted at the Toziers’ and they never ratted her out to her mother. When she stayed the night, she borrowed a pair of Richie’s big comfortable flannel pajamas rather than wearing her own pink set with little flowers. Eddie’s room was a big Laura Ashley and Lillian Vernon nightmare complete with a canopy bed that Richie had secretly coveted in first grade and now found horrifying. Her desk was white with little scallops and a matching white scalloped chair with EKF written in pink on the back, which had confused Richie for years until Eddie finally explained monograms, a pink flowered lamp on top, a cup full of pink pencils with her name on them. Everything was so pink and covered in tiny roses that it made Richie want to sneeze looking at it.

Richie, dreaming, realized it was the site of many of her most confusing dreams over the years. Why, she had always wondered, did she keep dreaming about this place she had never been before? Who was the big-eyed little girl with the freckles across her nose, the one dream Richie loved with her entire being?

She wandered around the room and looked at the walls and the television and the pajamas thrown over the back of her own grubby little white desk on this particular day sometime in 1989—before or after the clown, she wasn’t sure—while she listened to her own teenage self talking to Eddie.

“It sucks, but you did shout that he had a little dick in front of everyone,” Eddie said from her perch on Richie’s window seat. They must have just been at school, because her hair was in a neat ponytail held by an elastic with a pink puff on it. Little pink skirt, white knee socks, pink and white shoes, white button up with pink hearts on it. Eddie wasn’t allowed to wear pants until high school, but whenever they went out to play she changed into shorts and a t-shirt at Richie’s house, and her hair never stayed neat for long.

“I can’t help it. Stupid shit just goes _blah_ right out of my mouth,” Richie was saying. Richie always laughed at pictures of herself when she was younger, because she had had everything going against her—lurching over the other girls, already a D-cup and in denial about it, wild frizzy hair, thick glasses, braces, pimples, heavy sweat and a heavy period and a heavy, heavy need to kiss her best friend that was obvious even from where she was standing—but she felt suddenly affectionate on top of everything else. This kid was a mess, but she was more herself than Richie was now. She remembered those pegged jeans and that tie-dyed turtle t-shirt. She had worn it until was full of holes and cried when she had to give it up to the scrap heap.

“Maybe you should cover your mouth,” Eddie said. “Then you won’t get punched.”

“I don’t care if any of those fuckheads beat me up, but Hockstetter stepped on my fucking Walkman,” Richie said.

“You can use mine,” Eddie said, and got up, kicking Richie in the leg. “Move over. Let’s play Mario Land.”

She sat on the floor beside Richie and picked up a controller, sliding her leg under Richie’s and leaning against her so she could elbow her and bellow directly into her ear when Richie beat a level she had wanted to beat. The sky outside the window darkened with an oncoming storm and when Richie blinked and opened her eyes she was sitting on the floor of the cavern, holding her own jacket against Eddie’s destroyed body, realizing afresh that the woman under her hands, who had been the big-eyed little girl with the freckles on her nose, her best friend and her favorite person in the world, was dead.

She opened her eyes again and knew she was awake but not exactly where she was, so when she felt someone behind her she clawed at the covers to drag herself away.

“For fuck’s sake, it’s all right,” Eddie said gently, clinging like a limpet so Richie wouldn’t throw herself off the bed.

“Eddie?” she asked. Her voice felt thick and shaky and she realized she was crying.

“I’m here,” Eddie said, loosening her arms a little so Richie could breathe.

“Fuck,” she sighed, and felt herself grow even more tense, shoulders hunching. She hated the sensation of being held from behind—had never really loved being held, period, but especially didn’t like the feeling of having someone draped along her back. Everyone said it made them feel safe, but she just felt suffocated and awkward and too hot. She preferred to be the one holding, always. That was what made her feel safe. She rolled over in Eddie’s arms and then it felt much better, resting her head on Eddie’s chest. She could hear her heartbeat, and Eddie started to stroke her hair, which made her sleepy.

“I wonder if we have all have the same nightmares,” Eddie murmured.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Richie said before she realized how harsh her voice was. “Sorry. I just hate being comforted.”

“I know,” Eddie said. It sounded like she was smiling. “You never fucking let me near you when you were sad.”

“I don’t like anyone to know what upsets me,” she admitted. “Especially you.”

“What the fuck. Why especially me?”

“If you wanted to, you could destroy my fucking life, man,” she sighed, drifting off.

Eddie pulled her even closer and Richie listened to the steady bump of her heart. The sweat dried on her forehead, and the gentle movement of Eddie’s fingers through her hair pushed her into sleep again.

*

Richie liked to wake up early. It didn’t really go along with her image, like many things about her, but she had always found it comforting to be awake when the sun rose, and there was always so much to do during the day that sleeping seemed like a waste. Lately, most of what she had to do was bed-based, so it was a good thing she could wake up at—she checked her phone—six-thirty and have the entire morning to just flop onto her back and do some quality staring.

Beside her, Eddie stretched without opening her eyes. Eddie also woke up early naturally, but she was not cheerful about it.

“Mmph.” Eddie untangled her fingers from Richie’s hair. “You have so much fucking hair, Rich. When did that happen? It used to be so short.”

“Yeah, I looked like Alice from Dilbert,” she said. “Part of the reinvention was getting rid of the triangle of frizz.”

“I always kind of liked it,” Eddie said. She opened her eyes and Richie’s heart felt like it fucking twitched in her chest because it was like the past twenty-five years had disappeared and they were having a sleepover at Casa Tozier, when Eddie would wake up like an annoyed kitten. She reached out and tugged on the ends of Richie’s hair. “It’s really soft now though.”

“Well, this weird little troll with great hair told me about some expensive ass shampoo,” Richie said, and waited for Eddie to yank. She wasn’t disappointed.

“Your bed is way too comfortable,” Eddie mumbled, rolling over. “I could stay here for a long time.”

“Now you understand the last two months of my life,” Richie said. “It’s kind of nice just staring at the ceiling.”

They were quiet for a few minutes while Eddie wriggled around and Richie watched the play of light on the walls and the ceiling through her curtains. She had kept the window open and there was a little bit of ocean breeze, which made it even nicer to curl up under the covers.

“I quit my job,” Eddie said quietly. “I didn’t want to talk about it last night because I was already freaking out, but I’m—like, I’m still freaking out. I can’t talk to Martin. I have no idea what I’m doing, Rich.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” Richie said, turning her head to grin at Eddie across the pillows. “Richie Tozier’s Home for Mid-life Crisis Fuckups.”

“Good, because I’m moving in,” Eddie said. “I hope you realize that.”

“Are you?” Richie knew she probably looked too happy at the prospect; she was glowing with happiness, actually. “Well, good. Stay with me forever. You know I’d love it if the entire Losers Club lived in one giant mansion together.”

“Not me. Can you imagine how terrible it would be living with Stan?” Eddie rolled over and inched into her arms like a caterpillar, and Richie braced herself for a moment like she might shatter, as she always did, before she pulled her close. “I’m really scared.”

“Me too,” Richie whispered. “I couldn’t do what I was doing anymore, but I feel like I ruined everything and I don’t know what to do next.”

“I couldn’t do it anymore either,” Eddie said. She rested her hand on Richie’s ribs through her sleep t-shirt and Richie tried not to shiver, but the combination of the cool sheets and the warm woman and the burning hot touch was driving her crazy. She shivered anyway, and Eddie touched her arm and laughed. “I forgot you always got goosebumps so easily.”

“My skin is—stop, it’s really sensitive,” Richie gasped as Eddie dragged her fingers slowly up and down the inside of her arm. All she fucking needed was to be tangled up in bed with the love of her stupid fucking life, getting turned on by the light, electric tracing of her fingertips along her forearms and the tops of her hands.

“You used to always get me or Bill to do this on your back until you fell asleep,” Eddie said. “Not Stan.”

“No, Stan did it,” she said through gritted teeth, pushing Eddie’s hand away before she straight up moaned. “He said it was the only way I would shut up.”

Ben had done it too, without even knowing how much it comforted her, after Eddie had broken her arm—he had rubbed her back with a tentative, clumsy hand, reassuring and silent, while Eddie’s mother drove off with Eddie sobbing in the front seat.

She rolled out of bed and went for her jeans and t-shirt, but stopped when Eddie said, “Hey, do you want to—I don’t know. Go for a run?”

“That sounds terrible,” she said. “I haven’t done any exercise since I got back from Derry, and it’s been a dream come true.”

“I haven’t been exercising very much either. Martin didn’t like it, especially in the summer when it might make my asthma act up,” Eddie said with a sour look. She sat up in the bed and Richie tried not to think about how nice she looked there, with her hair sticking up on one side. She wore a little white cotton camisole and tap shorts set and Richie felt a little faint realizing she had just been lying next to Eddie half the night while she was wearing that.

“What the hell, Eds?” she asked. “All you need is a sleep mask and an orange cat and…an obsession with Tiffany’s? I don’t know, I never watched that movie.”

“I know. When Martin and I first got together I just wore, like, t-shirts and shorts to bed, and he hated it so he kept getting me lacy nightgowns and shit. This is my favorite because it’s the only thing I have that doesn’t make me feel like a fucking cupcake. He hates it too but he can’t complain because it’s still nice.” Eddie gave her a smug little grin, and Richie tried to look normal and not like she was thinking Martin was a fucking idiot if he preferred a froufrou nightgown to Eddie’s soft skin.

“Anyway,” Richie said, turning away. “The only time I’m ever running again is if I’m running toward a giant cake. Or a giant vagina, maybe. Giant things that taste good in general.”

Eddie made a face, but it was curious rather than disgusted, like she was about to ask a question.

“I was thinking,” Richie said, not wanting to hear whatever she was about to ask. “I need to sort out my entire life. Like with checklists and stuff. You like that kind of shit, right?”

“No,” Eddie said, scowling. “You’re thinking of Stan. I have an assistant— _had_ an assistant—who kept my life organized. He did not want to come with me to California.”

“Should I hire an assistant?” Richie asked, tossing her clothes on the floor, crawling back into bed, and putting her face in her pillow.

“I need to sort my entire fucking life out too.” Eddie poked her arm. “We should do it together. Like, make a list of things we have to fix.”

“Uggggggh,” Richie groaned into the pillow.

“We can get Stan to tell us when we’re being dumb and look disappointed at us if we don’t make progress,” Eddie said. “You know that’s what he’s always wanted.”

Richie rolled over and considered it. “He would make such a good life coach,” she said.

“Fuck, he really would. We can never tell him,” Eddie said. “All right. I think step one is we have to get out of bed.”

“Step two is coffee,” Richie said.

“I don’t drink coffee,” Eddie said. “Rich, caffeine is terrible for you.”

“Okay, step two for you is to stop telling me caffeine is terrible for me,” Richie said. “And if you say you drink kombucha or some fucking algae shit, step three is me pretending we never met and kicking you out of my house.”

“It’s _healthy_ ,” Eddie said.

Richie rolled out of the bed again. “All right, I’m making a citizen’s arrest after the coffee.”

*

They curled up next to each other at the turquoise lacquered dining room table, in little spindly white café chairs. Richie spread out a notebook and Eddie looked over her shoulder.

“Okay,” Richie said. “I wrote down some categories. Money, health, work, house. Relationships?”

“Gross. No. Cross that one out,” Eddie said.

“Well, what are you going to put a divorce under?” Richie asked, grabbing one of Eddie’s strawberries.

“Stop it, you fucking child. I’ll put it under money.” Eddie dumped the strawberries from her plate onto Richie’s and stole Richie’s pineapple. Richie wanted to protest out of principle, but there were three entire pineapples in the fridge.

“Just the four categories then,” Richie said, and pulled out a sheet of paper with EDDIE written at the top, passed it over to her, then scribbled her own name and a hasty chart on the notebook.

They sat staring for almost a minute without moving.

“Okay,” Eddie said, drawing her knee up to her chest and chewing on a big piece of cantaloupe. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Richie agreed.

“I probably need a job?” Eddie said.

“I _guess_ ,” Richie said.

“So do you.” Eddie looked her up and down. “Bill said you’re getting torn apart on Twitter.”

Richie waved a hand. “Standup is probably off the table for a while, but you don’t do standup for the fucking money, that’s for sure.”

“So where the fuck is this coming from?” Eddie asked, pointing her pen at the walls.

“Voice acting, writing, commercials,” she said. “I helped doctor a Disney script one time. I don’t love any of that like I love standup, but you know, filthy lucre, blah blah.”

“I like the filthy lucre,” Eddie sighed. “And I like doing my job. Well, I like the math. I hate the people.”

“Is it like the movies? Is everybody a sociopath? Like, what percentage would you say are serial killers?”

“Fifty percent,” Eddie said. “At least. They’re not obvious about it like Patrick Bateman anymore though. They’re like, earnest environmentalists who secretly also drive up insulin prices.”

They were quiet again for a little while.

“I don’t know where to start,” Eddie said in a small voice.

“Well, what’s your biggest problem right this second?” Richie asked.

Eddie closed her eyes tight and put her head down on her knee. “Joint checking accounts.”

“Okay, you know who will know what to do?” Richie reached over to grab Eddie’s sheet of paper and wrote under the money section, _Call Bev_.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, sitting up straight and nodding. “Good idea, Rich.”

“Fuck Stan, we’re the real life coach geniuses,” Richie said. “All right, what else is wrong with you? We’re gonna solve all your problems today.”

*

Calling Bev was a genius move in more than one way, because as soon as she told Eddie, “Don’t do anything until you call a lawyer,” she added, “And don’t call a lawyer until I get there.”

“You’re coming to LA?” Richie exclaimed, clutching Eddie’s arm. Eddie gave a little squeaky whoop of happiness.

“Yeah, I want to act like a fool for a couple of days, and nobody does that better than the three of us,” she said. “Let me go book my flight and I’ll text you. See you soon, fools.”

“Do you ever get the feeling all the other Losers are competent adults and we’re still thirteen years old?” Eddie asked a few hours later when Bev texted them that she was headed to her hotel, and she would meet them there so they could eat at the lounge. _Sorry, there’s a dress code_ , she added ominously.

“No. We’re all fucking disasters,” Richie said. “Although I think me and Bill really bring down the average.”

“No, I’m right there with you,” Eddie said. “I think I’ve thought I was a competent adult for a long time, but then I get pissed about stupid things like dress codes, even though I was already going to wear something nice.”

“I don’t even think I have anything nice,” Richie said. “What does that even mean? All my heels and hot lady dresses are in a landfill somewhere.”

“All my jewelry is in New York,” Eddie said, her face suddenly bleak.

“Eds, you’re looking at a one-woman jewelry shop,” Richie said. She stood up and patted Eddie on the shoulder. “Come on, look at my pirate booty.”

The bathroom, which was almost as big as her childhood bedroom, was what had really sold her on the house. The tiles were turquoise with white stars on them, and there were four big round mirrors over a double sink. Richie spent almost as much time in the jacuzzi tub as she did in bed.

“You could raise a family in here,” Eddie said. “Also, what the fuck, are you a jacuzzi person now?”

“I think you’ll find that I’ve always been a jacuzzi person,” she said loftily. She opened the linen closet to reveal the jewelry hanger on the back of the door. There were hundreds of necklaces, although she rarely remembered to wear them. “You like gold, right? I usually wear silver, but there’s some gold in here.”

“That one,” Eddie said, pointing to a delicate chain with three tiny star pendants. The sight of it sparked a memory that almost slipped away before Richie grasped for it and held it up to the light.

“You had a necklace like this,” she said wonderingly. “Didn’t you? You wore it all the time.”

Eddie nodded. “My dad bought it when I was a baby, and my mom had it extended when I outgrew it. I don’t know where it is now, though. I must have forgotten how important it was.”

“That sucks, Eds,” Richie said, feeling soft and hating herself for it. She grabbed the necklace and held it up over Eddie’s head. “Your jewels, madam.”

She fastened it and Eddie gave her a pleased look in the mirror before she left to change her clothes, and surprised Richie by coming back in with her makeup. Richie was in the middle of struggling to contain all her hair, and finally gave up and started to tie it into a messy side braid.

“I don’t know how I never learned how to do a French braid,” she said. She felt oddly cut open by the sight of the two of them in her bathroom mirrors, which was ridiculous because it was far from the first time they had gotten ready to go somewhere together and she assumed it wouldn’t be the last. For some reason it felt more intimate than sleeping in the same bed, and she kept jostling Eddie’s elbow while she was putting on her makeup to distract herself from it.

“Your mom wasn’t pushy about that kind of thing,” Eddie said as she gave her eyelashes a couple of swipes of mascara. Richie, after some thought, had decided that the only makeup she wanted to wear ever again was just enough to cover up her under-eye bags and whatever was currently wrong with her skin, which was a huge departure from the forty-five minutes it usually took for her to look like she wasn’t wearing any makeup.

“Yeah, but like. She never taught me how to do any of this shit, and I know she knows how to do it. She has more makeup than the two of us combined,” Richie said. “I think I was just such a profound disappointment as a daughter that she didn’t even know where to start.”

“Rich, if anyone had tried to get near you with lipstick back then, you would have bitten their fingers off.” Eddie eyed her hair in the mirror. “And your hair was never long enough for a French braid. I think your mom just wanted to let you be yourself.”

Richie shrugged uncomfortably. Her issues with her mother were mild and petty, especially compared to Eddie’s, and she could never articulate them, not only because she felt like a whiny teenager but because she couldn’t get at the core of them. They got along—that was the thing people always asked, _Do you get along with your parents?_ and she did—and she loved them and knew, with total certainty, that they loved her. But there was a stretch of time in fourth or fifth grade where she tried to be more like Eddie, because her mother had started to use Eddie as a behavioral bludgeon. Why couldn’t Richie be more polite, like Eddie? Why couldn’t Richie keep her clothes clean, like Eddie? Why couldn’t Richie have normal toys and hobbies? Why, when it came down to it, couldn’t Richie be cute and quiet and little instead of a disgusting, loud, sloppy giant who annoyed everyone?

She would have hated Eddie if she hadn’t known Eddie was actually as weird and annoying as she was, but she didn’t tell her mother that. She let it go on and on until finally one day she shrieked that she didn’t want to be like Eddie, threw herself face down on the couch, and cried so hard her father came into the living room at one point and patted her on the shoulder. Her mother let it go with an offhand, amused comment about how sensitive Richie was, a common complaint until Richie finally toughened up so much that nothing bothered her, but it had festered somewhere between them all Richie’s life—not Eddie herself, but the knowledge that her mother had wanted a different kind of daughter.

And who could blame her, really? Richie watched herself as she finished braiding. Who would choose a kid like her, if they had a choice? Her dad had always seemed pretty pleased with her, in his own way, but that was because she was so much like him. When she had called to warn them that she had come out—and oh, by the way, she was gay, did they not know?—her father had said, “Huh. That explains some things,” and her mother said dryly, “Well, we got used to you being a comedian instead of a dentist eventually,” and Richie got off the phone with them as soon as she could because she felt like shrieking and throwing herself down on the couch again. Her mother loved her. She did, unassailably. She just didn’t always notice when she was pushing down on a bruise, and Richie had learned to stop letting anyone know there was a bruise in the first place.

“What about your glasses?” Eddie asked, sliding her Fitbit around her wrist. The band was gold, and Richie had laughed at it that morning until Eddie looked pointedly at the very expensive and very unnecessary pool outside.

“I hate to tell you this, but those were a one-time Derry special, and only because I felt like someone was stabbing my eyes the second I crossed the city limits,” she said. 

“That’s too bad. I always liked them,” Eddie said. She wandered into Richie’s closet, and gave a muffled noise of confusion. “How do you have eight million necklaces but like, one pair of jeans and three hoodies?”

“I told you, I threw out all my clothes,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest awkwardly. “I don’t know how to be a person.”

“Yeah, this is kind of dire,” Eddie said. “Oh, you still have your Pearl Jam t-shirt. Okay, I claim that.”

“You can’t claim it, it’s my fucking shirt,” Richie said, but didn’t protest when Eddie emerged with a little pile of clothes and threw the t-shirt onto her own suitcase.

“All right,” Eddie said, setting the clothes down on the bed. “Richie, this is an intervention. You have harmed good taste in the following ways.”

She held up an oxford embroidered with tiny toucans.

“Hey, I like that shirt,” Richie said, grabbing it from her. “Get out of here, pink sweater set, you don’t know what the fuck you're talking about.”

*

Out of spite, Richie wore the toucan shirt with a pair of white pants that thankfully still fit, but it was undercut by the fact that Eddie was in love with her car. She vacillated between glaring at Richie's stupid shirt and glaring at Richie for hiding a 1970 Dodge Challenger from her for eighteen hours, and when Richie wouldn’t let her drive it she sulked for fifteen minutes before giving in and touching everything in the interior, demanding every restoration detail until they arrived at Bev’s hotel.

“You look great,” Bev said, holding Richie at arm’s length to examine her hair. “I like it.”

“Doesn’t it look nice?” Eddie said, pulling on the end of Richie’s braid.

Richie shot Eddie a suspicious look. “You think my hair looks nice? I haven’t been to a salon in like three months.”

“Yeah, it’s so wavy that the white looks like highlights,” Eddie said.

“And you’re wearing your glasses again,” Bev said. “I love your glasses.”

Eddie grinned smugly over her shoulder as they walked to their table.

“God, it’s nice to be with the two of you,” Bev sighed, leaning back in her chair after they had ordered drinks. “I love the guys, and it’s not like I can’t talk to them about things, but it’s not the same.”

Richie remembered, with a wave of shame, how jealous she had been when Bev joined the group. It hadn’t lasted long, and it was almost entirely because Eddie had gone wide-eyed and said _Wow, her hair really is pretty_ when they were drying off in the sun after swimming in the quarry, but she hadn’t wanted another member of their little club. She had liked it being just her and Eddie and Stan and Bill. When they were really little, Bill had decided that he and Stan would marry Eddie and Richie and the four of them would live in a house together. Neither Eddie nor Stan were interested, but Bill liked to play house and they all liked to do what Bill liked to do then, and Richie secretly liked the idea, despite protesting that both Stan and Bill were gross, because she hated the thought of growing up and not being near her friends all the time. Ben and Bev and Mike had interrupted that, and she resisted the feeling of rightness, of having known them all her life, longer than the others did. After the rock fight things were different, but she suspected Bev had sensed her animosity before Richie threw her whole self into loving the three of them the way she loved Bill and Stan and Eddie.

“What have you been up to, Red?” she asked. “You know how Eddie and I hate to gossip, but we couldn’t help but notice you and Ben aren’t staying together.”

“No, not right now,” Bev said. The waiter brought their drinks and salads, and Richie stared down at her plate and wrinkled her nose.

“I forgot how much I fucking hate salad,” she said. “Eds?”

“Mm, yeah, I’ll take it,” Eddie said, dragging the plate away from her. “So are you guys, like, on a break? What are you doing?”

“We decided not to see each other until after my divorce is final,” Bev said. “Neither of us want that, but Tom keeps promising that he’s going to kill me.”

Eddie looked up sharply mid-bite. “What the fuck,” she said around a piece of avocado.

“That’s Tom Rogan,” Bev said, shaking her hair back and giving them a wry smile. “I don’t want him to even know Ben exists. His lawyer is a complete asshole who will claim I cheated and broke our pre-nup, but the death threats are more pertinent.”

“Beverly,” Richie said, then took a long drink. “I have the highest faith that you can take care of yourself, but could you just let us kill him? I’ve already axe murdered one shitstain, and I feel like it probably gets easier.”

“No. No.” Bev shook her head. “I know you’re not serious, not really, but I want no more violence, not ever.”

“Really?” Eddie asked. “After all the shit we’ve been through, sometimes it seems like violence is the only answer when nobody else will do anything.”

“No, I’m sick of monsters forcing me to speak their language,” Bev said. “We do it my way now. The great thing about Ben is that he asked what he could do to help me and when I told him I wanted him to do absolutely nothing, he actually did it. Well, he added some safety measures around his house and his office just in case, but you know what? Not as many as you would think.”

“Yeah, Ben’s a cowboy,” Richie said. “The most gentlemanly cowboy in history, but if Tom goes after him, he’s gonna get fed to a rattlesnake.”

“And I would be okay with that,” Bev said. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t defend myself either, if I had to, but it won’t come to that.”

“With our luck, he’d come back to life anyway,” Richie said.

“Oh my god, I keep forgetting,” Bev said, setting down her fork. “How are you doing?”

She shrugged, looking over the menu for the eighth time and realizing she didn’t know what she wanted to eat. Did she like salmon? “I’m annoyed that he’s still fucking alive after trying to kill Mike and Eddie,” she said. “Eds, do you remember if I said I liked fish?”

Eddie pulled out her phone. “You said you tried fish sticks and felt, and I quote, ‘threatened but not in a good way.’”

“Okay, well, I’m trying the salmon, so prepare to make a note about whether I shit my brains out later.”

“You seem like you’re not doing too badly, Eddie,” Bev said. “You’re staying with Richie?”

Richie shook her head at her while Eddie was still busy looking at her phone, and Bev raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips.

“Yeah, it’s good,” Eddie said absently, absorbed in what looked like an intense note about Richie’s digestion. “I mean, it’s Richie, so we might kill each other, but yeah, good. She’s distracting me so I don’t call Martin and let him convince me to un-destroy my life.”

“We’re writing down all the things that are wrong with us so we can fix them,” Richie told Bev, adding proudly, “My list is _very_ long.”

Eddie gave a deep sigh. “It’s the year of the divorced Losers, I guess.”

“Good riddance to excess baggage,” Richie said. “The guys seem to be doing all right.”

Bev shook her head. “You haven’t read the group chat today, have you?”

“ _No_ ,” Richie gasped, bracing herself on the table. “Did he finally do it?”

She and Eddie opened the group chat and Eddie read it with one hand poised in the air as if she were about to tell someone to stop talking. “He did. Finally. Good for him,” Eddie said. “I mean, right? Or good for her?”

“Probably for both of them,” Richie said. “Imagine being with a guy for however many years and then all of a sudden, age forty, there’s a whole nightmare childhood for him to lie about. Obviously we know it’s not his fault, but that’s gotta sting.”

“He could always tell her. I think Patty will understand when Stan finally explains it to her. Maybe Audra could too,” Bev said. She sighed and the breeze picked up, making her red hair dance around her pink and white face, framed by the lounge’s pink and green color scheme. Richie wanted to take a picture of her, but she was terrible at it, doomed to recognize how great a scene would look but incapable of producing a single good photograph of anything. She was forbidden from taking pictures at parties, despite her enthusiasm.

“Patty will understand because Stan is the only one of us who ever figured out how emotions work,” Richie said.

“Which makes no fucking sense,” Eddie said, slicing her hand through the air. The server set their food down in front of them and Richie stared dubiously at her salmon while Eddie ignored it all. “Stan doesn’t _emote_. Stan doesn’t do _emotions_.”

“Honestly? I think Stan is magic,” Richie said. “Like, more than usual. I don’t think he forgot Derry, or us. Did you hear what he said when we first got to the restaurant?”

“About reading Bill’s books? Yeah.”

“Maybe he did remember,” Bev mused. “Maybe that’s why he had a chance to have normal emotional growth.”

“Hey, we don’t know that. Maybe we’ll get a text that he and Patty are on the rocks too and we’re oh for seven,” Richie said. “I hope not, though. She seems cool.”

“I don’t think I could love anyone but you guys.” Eddie shrugged. “That’s half my problem with Martin. The idea of telling him about Derry gives me a fucking panic attack.”

“Well,” Richie said. “Bill’s free now.”

Eddie snorted. “Bev, didn’t you kiss him in Derry? How bad was it?”

Bev grimaced. “Don’t make me remember that.”

“I know we all love him, but let’s face facts. There’s no way he knows how to fuck.” Richie tilted her head back and thought about it. “Stan’s probably super thorough. He crosses the Ts and dots the Is. Ben wouldn’t let himself come until you did like six times. Like, he might get weird about it. Mike is gonna be super nervous and awkward at first and then boom, tenderness. Bill doesn’t know what a clitoris is.”

“I’ve read his sex scenes,” Eddie said. “That seems accurate.”

“You could teach him,” Richie said, nudging Eddie’s foot.

Eddie shook her head. “I had my crush on Bill when we were kids. Everybody has to get it out of their system eventually.”

“I didn’t,” Richie said. “I mean, I guess I sort of did, but it’s a special relationship between a baby lesbian and her dude best friend.”

“Anyway, I kinda think I’m gay too,” Eddie said. She had gone through her grilled artichokes in a few sharp bites, and wiped her fingers delicately on her napkin before she stole a sip of Richie’s margarita.

“You what,” Richie said.

“That’s the other part of my marital issues,” Eddie said.

“That seems like an important one,” Bev said.

“Probably,” Eddie said. “Does anybody want to split a Baked Alaska?”

“They set it on fire at the table, right?” Richie asked on autopilot, through numb lips. “That’s my shit.”

Eddie’s face lit up, and Richie wanted to stand up and run away, into the ocean. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s get it.”

“Yeah, Rich, let’s _get it_ ,” Bev said with a grin, and Richie swore revenge upon her and her children and her children’s children.


	4. October, Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie helps out with orgasms. For science.

Richie was silent the entire way home. Eddie threw her several worried looks and pinched her arm, and Richie smiled at her in an attempt to be reassuring, but when she had parked in the driveway and gotten out, Eddie stopped her and examined her face.

“You looked like you were in the deadlights again,” she said. “Just staring off into space, looking stupid. At least your mouth wasn’t hanging open this time.”

“Damn, I spend an eternity watching you die over and over and this is how you repay me?” Richie said, turning to walk up the driveway. Her house had a pretty nice view of the ocean, and more than anything she wanted to sit in the back yard and listen to some music and watch the sunset with Eddie, stick her feet in the pool, watch a movie afterward. Not talk about anything either of them might have said at lunch, at all.

“Rich.”

She stopped, not looking back. “What?”

“Are you, like…are you okay with me telling you and Bev about, you know. Being gay?” Eddie’s voice wobbled, and Richie thought that she honestly could have pushed through and never talked about it again if not for that. She turned and walked back to Eddie, who was standing at the end of Richie’s driveway, and grabbed her hand.

“Come on, let’s go inside,” she said. “Of course I’m okay with it. It’s just hot out and I’m tired.”

She had forgotten the way Eddie would nonchalantly perform some feat of insane bravery and then look for reassurance afterward, walking it back a little bit before gathering her determination and then storming ahead again. When they were in the cool quiet living room and Richie had kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the couch, Eddie sat upright on the end, almost prim if you ignored the way she was vibrating with energy.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” she said, staring straight ahead at the television. Her hands were suddenly all over the place, twisting together and then rubbing her arms, smoothing over her hair, touching the buttons on her cardigan.

“Eds,” Richie said.

Eddie closed her eyes tight. “Don’t make fun of me right now.”

“I promise I’ll save it for later,” Richie said, sitting up and rubbing Eddie’s back. “What do you need? You want a drink? Ice cream? Mr. M?”

Mr. M was the stuffed turtle Eddie had carried with her everywhere from approximately birth to age nine. Richie had teased her about the turtle, but gently—there was something comforting about him for Richie too, and when Eddie stayed over they snuggled Mr. M between them.

“Wanna hide in bed again?” she asked.

Eddie turned to her and nodded. “In our pajamas?”

“Fuck yeah,” Richie said, jumping up. “This is what I’m good at, sleeping and lounging and hiding.”

Eddie dove under the covers as soon as she had changed into Richie’s Pearl Jam t-shirt and a pair of tiny shorts that Richie ruthlessly forced herself to ignore, and Richie followed her with a joyful bounce that fluffed the comforter around them both.

“All right,” she said. “So you’re forty and just realized the magic of pussy. What brought you to this conclusion?”

“Richie, Jesus.” Eddie scowled. “You were the one who made me think about it, anyway. It didn’t even occur to me until you said you were gay.”

“Eds, are you saying you’re a werelesbian? The last time I bit you was like 1986.” There was something about it, though she had blurted it out without thinking about it, that hit her hard—her first half-buried thought was _well, you are a monster_ —even as it caught up to her what Eddie was actually saying.

“In retrospect,” Eddie said, her eyes on the ceiling, “it seems pretty obvious. I feel like an idiot.”

“Hey.” She touched Eddie’s hands, which were folded on her chest, above the covers, like she was about to say a prayer and go to sleep. “You’re not an idiot. Nobody ever gave us any fucking guidance like that when we were younger. It was all _and when you marry a man and have heterosexual procreative intercourse, you will be fulfilled as a woman_. You didn’t know.”

“You did,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, because I was a disgusting, horny little monster,” Richie said. “I was always thinking about sex.”

“I mean, I thought about sex all the time too. That’s not being a monster, that’s just being a teenager,” Eddie said. “It’s just—every time I thought about a girl, I thought I was thinking about myself. But I wasn’t.”

“Oh, I get that,” Richie said. “Dudes just never showed up in any of my fantasies, like, at all.”

“They did in mine but they were kind of faceless,” Eddie said, and scrunched up her nose like she was trying to remember something. “I think maybe they were me? But I didn’t imagine myself with a dick. I don’t know how to explain it. There was always a huge disconnect between my fantasies and actual sex. Actual sex—god, it was so fucking boring, Rich.”

“Eddie,” Richie said, turning onto her side and tugging on Eddie’s hand. “Eddie. Tell me someone has given you an orgasm in your life. Please.”

“No. No one’s ever made me come,” Eddie said. She seemed unconcerned, at least to Richie, who felt like she was about to have a screaming meltdown.

“Not even you?” she asked.

“Oh no, I have. Just not a guy,” she said. “I always thought it was because I was difficult and they were incompetent, and that’s—actually, that’s still true. Martin didn’t give a fuck if I came or not, and I didn’t care if he made me come because I wanted to get it over with.”

“Okay, so you’re lying there, yawning while some dude pounds away at you, and what? You’re suddenly like _oh, vaginas_?”

“Yeah, kind of. I just realized my fantasies were really, really gay,” Eddie said, turning red but smiling up at the ceiling. “And then it blew up from there.”

“Okay,” Richie said, breathing as carefully as she could so she wouldn’t hyperventilate. “Gay fantasies. Okay.”

“But I have no practical experience,” Eddie said, sounding like she was in the middle of an interview.

Richie clenched her fingers in the sheets, her entire body going stiff. “You need some on-the-job training?” she asked.

“Actually, yes,” Eddie said, turning her head to look at Richie, finally. She took a deep breath. “I was hoping maybe you might want to kiss me.”

“To make sure you’re actually into women?” Richie asked. “I could be down with that. You know, for science.”

“No, I know I’m into women.” Eddie smiled. “I just want to kiss you.”

The numb feeling that had overtaken her at the lounge crept into her limbs again. “Me,” she whispered. “Why?”

“Because I…I know you,” Eddie said. “And I’m, uh. I don’t know. I just want to.”

“Okay,” Richie said, like it was even a question. Of course—of course she was going to kiss Eddie if Eddie asked her to. There was very little in this world she wouldn’t do if Eddie wanted it.

“Okay?” Eddie’s eyebrows came together in confusion and concern. “Are you gonna—does that mean you’ll kiss me?”

Richie rolled so she was hovering above her, sliding her leg between Eddie’s to brace herself, and looked down into her worried eyes. _Fuck it_ , she thought. _I might not get another chance at this. I’m kissing her until my lips fall off._ She smiled, bent down, and bit Eddie’s chin.

“Richie,” Eddie sputtered, hitting her shoulder, and while she was still laughing, Richie kissed her.

She had always figured they would kiss like they interacted everywhere else, teasing and then slowing down into something deeper, and she wasn’t entirely wrong, but Eddie went very warm and soft under her instead of fighting back as ferociously as she normally did. She moved her hand down Richie’s arm and pushed up against her, tugging her closer so Richie’s thigh was firmly pressing between her own, and it made Richie shiver and sigh.

“Fuck, I’m definitely gay,” Eddie said breathlessly. “I already knew that, but—verified. Can I have more?”

“You can have anything you want,” Richie said, so turned on she couldn’t stop herself from loving Eddie with a recklessness that was new to her. She never had to try to be careful with other women; she was naturally reserved, not affectionate, a little cold—among many other accusations aimed at her over the years. But she felt it now, full of something that felt sweet and young and joyful and golden, not cold, certainly not reserved.

Eddie bit her lip and studied Richie nervously. “Anything?”

“Yeah, Eds,” she said. “Say the word.”

Eddie patted her arm fast, like she was asking her to hold on just a second, and pulled away to strip her shirt off, then squirmed around under the covers to shove off her shorts and, Richie realized as she stared with her mouth hanging open, her underwear. _That is a naked Eddie_ , she thought dumbly.

“Um,” Eddie said. “You said anything. Is this—”

“Yes,” Richie said. “Yes. Please be naked.”

The anxiety on Eddie’s face relaxed into an exasperated smile. She had pushed the covers down so she was uncovered completely, and Richie wanted to reach for her more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life, but she couldn’t move. The contrast of Eddie’s body was something that had compelled Richie for over twenty years—soft but strong, small chest but thick round muscle in her ass and thighs, all of her put together so perfectly that Richie thought she could spend years watching her move and never be bored. She had, in fact, watched her move for years, and she was still fascinated by the sight of her.

“Well, you’re naked,” she said, aiming for a teasing tone and hoping it worked. “What next?”

“Now you should kiss me again,” Eddie said. Richie, considering the bounty before her, tensed, and Eddie’s eyes filled with anxiety again. “If you want to.”

“I want to,” she said softly, sliding an arm around her and pulling her close again.

There was always such a war inside her between the desire to deflect reality by romanticizing what she loved about a woman’s body into art—the gradient of smooth skin darkening or lightening to pink between her legs like the heart of a flower, pearls and rubies, peach and pomegranate, the taste of honey—and the desire to confront the beautiful reality of it: that a woman smelled and tasted and looked like a woman and not like anything else, that sex wasn’t flowers and jewels and sweetness but something better because it was real. Eddie, she realized, was all of those things to her, maybe because she loved her so much or maybe because she had changed. The reality of her underneath Richie’s fingers and tongue was also art; every part of her gave Richie the sensation of diving into something so gorgeous it was almost sublime, even amid the immediate, plain desire to fuck her brains out.

“You’re so beautiful,” she mumbled against the side of Eddie’s neck, sliding her fingers into the back of her hair. “Did you know that? Everything about you.”

Eddie moaned and tightened her thighs around Richie’s leg, grabbing Richie’s free hand and placing it firmly on one small breast. Richie ran her fingers along the underside of it and then around her tight, stiff nipple, feeling the silky skin break out in goosebumps. Eddie’s breath went ragged when she pinched very gently, and Richie kissed her slow and hazy while they wrapped tighter around each other before she shifted down and drew her nipple into her mouth.

“Rich,” Eddie gasped, bucking up against her. “What the fuck?”

“Bad? Good?” Richie asked.

“ _Good_.” Eddie nudged her. “More, please.”

Richie pushed so she was fully on her back, and went for it. Her nipples were more sensitive than Richie’s and she could only handle a little bit of pressure before her leg started to twitch, but the moment Richie stopped she shook her head and arched to get more. Richie eased up and found the balance that made her really moan, rubbing against Richie’s leg shamelessly—or maybe she didn’t realize she was doing it, a thought that sent such an enormous arrow of heat through her that she had to pull away and rest her head on Eddie’s chest. When she lifted up again she knelt so she was between Eddie’s ankles and watched her for a moment. She was flushed and damp and looked wild, a little desperate.

“You okay?” she asked, her voice shaking.

“I am fucking amazing, Eds,” Richie said, bending down to kiss her ankle, her knee. She kissed her way along the soft, peachy skin while her thumbs slowly stroked the insides of Eddie’s thighs, working her way up while Eddie writhed. She needed something to rub against, Richie thought, and pressed the heel of her hand against her so she could grind up against it, which she did with a little choked noise. Richie slowly spread her legs with her shoulders and got in close. She was slick and wet all the way down to her upper thighs, and Richie happily licked it up, pressing her mouth and nose in deep.

“Do you want my fingers inside you?” she asked.

“No, your mouth. On me. Please,” Eddie gasped. She covered her eyes and then slid her hands up into her hair like she couldn’t find anything to ground herself. “I think about it all the time. Please, Rich.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I think—it must feel really good.” She touched Richie’s mouth with an unsteady hand.

“Damn, okay,” Richie said, awestruck and confused. She kissed the tips of Eddie’s fingers and rearranged her so one arm was under her leg and the other hand was spreading her open a little. She kissed her clit and grinned to herself when Eddie jerked hard under her. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes, please, please,” Eddie panted.

Her hand shot down and she started to rub her thumb over her clit with light, rapid movements until Richie pushed her out of the way, bent her head, and sucked. Eddie cried out and Richie felt her foot pressing rhythmically against her back. She teased for a while, trying to find the right pressure the way she had with her nipple, and she knew she had it when she could feel the fine tension in Eddie’s thighs, the trembling of her muscles, when Eddie started to pant out fast little whining moans, pushing up hard into Richie’s mouth to get more.

“Sorry—oh, oh, sorry, fuck,” she whispered. “It feels so good, I’m sorry.”

“No, keep going,” Richie said, sucking again and again, tighter, longer, seeing how Eddie wanted it. When she tilted her head and sucked as she rubbed her tongue back and forth over her clit fast, Eddie’s hips shot up and she went tense and silent for a moment before she fucked against Richie’s mouth with complete abandon, her breath sobbing out in shocked, moaning bursts. Richie’s entire body felt like it was buzzing— _I made her come, I made Eddie come, she came all over my face,_ she thought deliriously while Eddie’s legs tightened against her shoulders. She slowed the movement of her tongue until Eddie’s muscles loosened and she relaxed against the bed, and then she pulled away, sitting up and wiping the back of her hand across her chin.

Eddie stared up at her, eyes trained on her mouth. “Oh my god,” she said thickly, reaching out to run a thumb over her wet lips before she dragged Richie down and kissed her.

“Was it everything you hoped it would be?” she murmured against Eddie’s lips.

“Better,” Eddie said. “But only half.”

“You want to go again?” Richie asked, running a hand over Eddie’s stomach and kissing a line from her chin to her ear. Eddie turned her head to accommodate her with a drowsy, pleased hum.

“No. I mean, yes, but I want to touch you too.”

Richie pulled back a little and considered her own body, which she had barely paid attention to. She was overheated, definitely soaking wet, probably smelled weird. Probably _felt_ weird. “Really?” she asked, unable to keep the skepticism from her voice.

“Do you think I don’t want to?” Eddie pushed Richie back against the bed, trying to glare at her, but her cheeks were pink, her eyes too sleepy with satisfaction to make it land. Richie watched her warily, running her fingers along the side of one breast to watch her shiver.

“I think you don’t have to,” Richie said. “You’ve never done it before, and I’m kind of…”

“What? You’re kind of what?” Eddie asked.

“I don’t know. Gross, I guess.” She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. I can take care of myself.”

“Fuck you. You’re not gross,” Eddie said. “What dumbass said that? Seriously. I’m fucking gay, okay? I think about your tits all the time, you asshole.”

“Tits are one thing,” Richie said. “Everybody likes tits. Not everybody likes pussy.”

“Did you like mine?”

“Yeah, but I’m really into it, as a general thing,” she said. “And yours is nice.”

“ _Rich_ , come on,” Eddie said. Her voice dropped. “I, like—I want to eat you out. I don’t just think about tits. I want to know what makes you come. You always talked about sex, but you never said what it felt like, if it felt good, if some guy got you off.”

“I mean, I was lying,” Richie said.

“I didn’t _know_ that, obviously. I thought I wanted more details because I wanted to know what sex felt like, but I didn’t. I just wanted to know what it felt like to _you_.” Eddie’s hands were busy sliding up under her t-shirt. “What do you like? You said you were a size queen one time. I fantasized about that all the time, you getting fucked by a big dick. I thought it was about me—like, I thought I was into big dicks, imagining a dude inside me. But a few months ago I realized I never used to even think about the guy, just the way you’d look all stretched out around something inside you, getting fucked from behind, getting all wet. I just wanted to see you come.”

“Jesus Christ,” Richie muttered, squirming.

“I’ve been getting off thinking about eating you out since fucking Derry.” Eddie reached around Richie and undid her bra with her skinny, clever fingers, and then pushed it off along with the t-shirt. Her eyes flicked down to Richie’s chest and up again a few times, clearly distracted. “If you’re uncomfortable with me touching you, I won’t, but if it’s because you think I won’t like it, I’ve come like a million times imagining you riding my face. I’m gonna like it.”

“Oh, so you’re like, _gay_ gay,” Richie laughed.

“ _Yeah_ , dumbass, so tell me what you like,” Eddie said in a low voice. “I always wanted to know.”

“I’m easy,” she said, but wrinkled her nose and stared at the ceiling because it actually wasn’t easy, even after all this time, to just say what she wanted.

Eddie ran her fingers over Richie’s neck and watched her shudder. Slid down to her arms, the insides of her elbows, traced fine lines along the skin there that was so sensitive Richie wanted to scream but wouldn’t even let herself breathe too hard.

“Is it too much?” Eddie said after a moment. “For you to tell me?”

“I want to,” she said. “I really do. It might be easier if you just—did what I did to you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’ll go off in like a minute,” she said. “Or I’ll get stuck in my head and it’ll take an hour, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen today.”

“It’s okay if it takes an hour,” Eddie said. She was already moving down between Richie’s legs, pushing her shorts and underwear down her legs, and gave her a look she couldn’t read. “I’ll probably like it.”

“Okay. Wow, what the fuck,” Richie said, and tried not to jump when she felt Eddie’s breath on her, tried not to think about what she looked like, what she smelled like, what she tasted like. Eddie didn’t waste any time—which she should have expected, Richie thought, too overwhelmed to laugh—just dove in with one little test lick before she started to suck her clit, her mouth hot and eager. It was too much at first and Richie’s foot kicked out before Eddie stopped, adjusted, and began again less aggressively.

She was right—it wasn’t going to take long. Thank god. If it went on longer than five minutes she always shut things down, but all she had to do was think _This is Eddie_ and she was close.

“That’s perfect,” she said, her jaw tight. “If you can just keep doing exactly that, I’m almost done.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before she was coming, holding herself rigidly still and silent against the wave of pleasure that spread through her. It wasn’t fast; she could have gone on for several minutes like that, caught up in it, if she let herself, but she never did when she was with another person. She let it go for half a minute or so before she touched the top of Eddie’s head, stroking her hair, to let her know she could stop.

Eddie bounded up the bed and threw her arms around Richie, who laughed in surprise.

“Happy gay birthday,” she said, still breathless and liquid with pleasure.

“That was great,” Eddie said. “Thanks, Rich.”

“Any time.” She patted Eddie’s ass. “I’m here for your lesbian mentoring needs.”

“Good,” Eddie said. She snuggled her face against Richie’s neck. “I’m probably going to need a lot of that.”

“Awesome. That’s pretty much my sweet spot,” Richie said. “Your future wife will be sending me thank you cards.”

Eddie was quiet for a while. “You were just helping me out, right?” she asked eventually. “You don’t really like serious shit.”

Richie hoped Eddie wasn’t paying too much attention to her heartbeat, which felt like it stuttered and slowed until it almost stopped. “Yeah, you don’t need to worry about me making it weird or anything,” she said. “I won’t, I promise. We’re just having fun.”

“We probably should keep it casual,” Eddie said.

“Casual is how I do best,” Richie agreed.

Eddie rolled out of bed and stretched. Her muscles stood out in the shade of the early evening, her eyelashes dark against her smooth cheek. Richie thought, maybe, that she was going to die of misery.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Eddie said. “Come with me.”

“I’ll be in in a sec. I need to brag to Bev about getting laid,” she said, reaching for her phone. “Can I tell her?”

Eddie gave her a small, strange smile. “Yeah, we deserve to brag a little,” she said, gathering up her clothes and going into the bathroom.

Richie waited until the shower turned on before she curled up into a ball, grabbing a pillow and pushing her face into it before she realized that if she let herself cry right now she wouldn’t be able to stop.

 _SOS, fucked up big time,_ she wrote to Bev.

Bev responded while she was sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to Eddie banging around in the shower. _If by fucked up you mean you fucked?_ she wrote.

 _I want to throw myself into a volcano_ , she replied. Her phone lit up with Bev’s number right away, and after a second of dithering, she accepted the call.

“Congratulations,” Bev said.

“No, don’t congratulate me for being the stupidest fucking person on earth,” she said, and suddenly she was crying in desperate silence, holding back her choked, shuddering breaths so Eddie wouldn’t hear her.

“What’s so stupid about it?” Bev asked. “Honey, you deserve to have good things. I wish you knew that.”

“She doesn’t love me, Bev,” she whispered. “I was okay with that before but now I made it a thousand times worse.”

“Don’t be stupid, of course she loves you,” Bev said.

“She definitely does not,” Richie said, struggling to calm down. She was good at it, folding her feelings up into a nice little square and filing them away. It was harder with Eddie, but then, wasn’t that why she was so good at it? She had years of practice with the best.

“Richie, get the fuck in here,” Eddie called out.

“ _Ask_ her if she loves you,” Bev said. 

“I have to go, but absolutely fucking not,” Richie said. “Forget I said anything. You have no idea who Richie Tozier is. When I count back from ten, you’ll wake up and cluck like a chicken.”

“I will sic Bill on you,” Bev hissed as Richie hung up.

 _Empty threat_ , she wrote.

 _No, you’re right. I’ll sic Stan_ , Bev replied.

Richie paused at that. _I’m going through a tunnel pshphiophhssss_ , she replied, put her phone face down on the bed, and went to shower with Eddie.


End file.
